Movie Scene by Paul McElwee: Good film? It’s a rumour!

CANADIAN conceptual artist/film director Guy Madden and his directing partners Evan and Galen Johnson have once again teamed up for this week’s film called ‘Rumours’.

The name is taken from the Fleetwood Mac album which was made during a very tumultuous time in the band’s history, a reference designed to reflect what’s going on on-screen.

‘Rumours’ centres around a G7 summit where all the bigwigs including the German chancellor (Cate Blanchett), French President (Denis Menochet), US President (Charles Dance), Canadian PM (Roy Dupuis) and British PM (Nikki Amuna-Byrd) gather to put together a draft statement in a remote chateau. One of the groups gets attacked by a ‘bog monster’ which, shall we say – this being a family newspaper and all – has a penchant for self-flagellation. This kicks off a series of events involving apocalyptic visions, brains the size of a small car and chat bots.

Part absurdist comedy, part satire on the ineptitude of politicians, part apocalyptic horror ‘Rumours’ straddles these three genres but never fully satisfies on any of them and, truth be told, it isn’t anywhere near as clever as it thinks it is.

It starts off decent enough; the set-up entices a scenario where politicians get chased by bog people and have to survive the night that never comes. Instead we get left with some kind of fever dream where strange things happen for no reason and the seven protagonists wander through the forest to apparent safety spouting dialogue surrounding previous summits with the occasional good zinger thrown in as well as nice visuals. All of them agree early on that their draft statement should say something but still be as vague as possible so that they don’t have to do anything – and that sums up the script. It’s all very vague and the supposed jokes would most likely only be enjoyed by policy wonks or G7 summit geeks. Although I did find one really funny part regarding a chatbot.

I can imagine people watching ‘Rumours’ with knowing smirks and ‘isn’t this clever’ facial expressions but not actually understanding a thing about it.

Alicia Vikander pops up halfway through speaking in her native Swedish tongue before going out in a literal blaze of glory.

Luckily the film gets anchored by some decent performances from the power-suited Merkel-esque Blanchett and Menochet’s bumbling French PM to help smooth the way through the madness. This coupled with the visuals makes ‘Rumours’ slightly more tolerable than it would otherwise be.