Rumours  (15) |Close-Up Film Review

This is a very odd film.   The premise is the seven prime ministers of the seven wealthiest countries meeting for a G7 summit with the object of drafting a provisional joint statement on a global crisis.  

The G7 countries are, as you probably know, Germany, France, Italy, Canada, Japan, United States and United Kingdom.   The meeting is hosted by the German chancellor Hilda Ortmann (Cate Blanchett)) and is being held on a remote and lush country estate in Saxony. 

If the object of the film is to demonstrate that leaders of state are as vulnerable and ineffectual as the rest of us, it succeeds in spades, as over a pleasant lunch in a gazebo in the nearby forest the leaders attempt to draft a long winded statement that commits them to absolutely nothing.  Demonstration of their incompetence and vulnerabilities is however just beginning.

Blanchett as Hilda, looking good enough to eat in a deep pink jacket and elegant hairstyle, comes off best in terms of keeping her head.  She even manages a quick liaison in the bushes with the Canadian premier Maxime Laplace (Roy Dupuis), a bit of a ladies’ man, who is initially a bit miffed that  the UK prime minister Cardosa Dewindt (Nikki Amuka-Bird) is no longer interested in picking up the affair they enjoyed at the last G7 summit.

Charles Dance with his British accent bafflingly intact plays American president Edison Wolcott, who keeps falling asleep and has a death wish due to his advanced age – remind you of anyone?   Italian PM Antonio Lamorte (Rolando Ravell) is a bundle of nerves from the start, while Japanese premier Tatsuro Iwesaki (Takehiro Hira) keeps a modest low profile throughout. 

However it is French President Sylvain Broulez (Denis Ménochet), whose rotund tummy and rolling gait speak of many good lunches, who first encounters the fact that there are some strange goings on in the forest, when the draft paper he and Iwesaki are attempting to draw up is blown away by a wicked wind, and chasing it, he falls into the open grave of an embalmed two thousand year old corpse.  In time honoured horror movie ghoul fashion, that corpse’s fellows will be haunting the septet from now on. 

This is the stuff of offbeat satirical comedy, though there are comparatively few laugh out loud moments.  Laplace turns out to be the alpha male of the group, his annoying man bun working loose to reveal his abundant head of long grey hair.  Well, this is a Canadian led movie, so naturally their guy is the hero.  While being chased by ghouls in the forest, they also come across the President of the European Commission (Alicia Vikander) hugging what looks like a giant human brain and burbling in Swedish (I think) about a new world order.

When shown at Cannes the film was hailed as a genre bending satire on political ineptitude.  It certainly has its moments, which include the portly Frenchman being wheeled in a wheelbarrow after hurting his knee by the anxious, White Rabbity Italian;  Dance’s diverting turn as the literally dozy American president with the cut glass accent and Blanchett as the elegantly unflappable German president Frau Ortmann.

Sharp satire combined with horror?   I’ve known sharper knives and scarier meals in movies but it’s certainly unusual and rather amusing.