Rumours

Director: Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson, Galen Johnson
Screenplay: Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson, Galen Johnson
Starring: Cate Blanchett, Charles Dance, Roy Dupuis, Denis Ménochet, Nikki Amuka-Bird, Rolando Ravello, Takehiro Hira, Zlatko Burić
Year: 2024 Duration: 104 min Country: Canada BBFC Certification: 15

For a few minutes, viewers of Rumours might find themselves concerned that Guy Maddin and his regular co-conspirators Evan and Galen Johnson have gone straight. For a few minutes.

Glancing at Letterboxd, it’s clear that some who’ve found themselves in front of Rumours and it’s many, many charms – giant brain in the woods, masturbating bog creatures, an AI created to catch paedophiles – are unfamiliar with the work of Guy Maddin. Let me assure those who may be coming to the Canadian chaos afresh, this is very much Maddin at his most commercial.

From the autobiographical – and almost entirely fictional – beauty of My Winnipeg (2007) to the fetishistic flirtations, with silent cinema Cowards Bend the Knee (2003) and Brand Upon the Brain! (2006) through a fruity pick’n’mix of shorts and avant garde experiments (such as 2017’s The Green Fog, a collage film that retells Hitchcock’s Vertigo using a stew of San Francisco footage) Maddin and his collaborators have blurred the lines between filmmaking and art installation, creating a world of humour, beauty, kink and surrealism that has seasoned the soup of cinema for forty years. About time he went for the Hollywood mainstream.

Rumours is a salty confection, narrowing eyes at its targets while relishing the opportunity to play with cinematic form, skipping lightly through colour, spectacle, artifice and politics (as if that isn’t tautology). Leaders of the world unite – or, at least, gather – for a G7 summit, intending to compose a joint statement on an unspecified crisis. As dinner settles they soon realise they may be alone in the gardens of this high-security mansion. Where are the staff? Where are their aides? What should they say? Do?

Cate Blanchett, Charles Dance, Roy Dupuis, Denis Ménochet, Nikki Amuka-Bird, Rolando Ravello, Takehiro Hira, Zlatko Burić, and Alicia Vikander are the ensemble who wander the woods trying to satiate the explosive, bog body electorate and keep their heads and their jobs. This isn’t the first time Maddin has worked with big stars (he made several films with Isabella Rossellini, including the short, The Rabbit Hunters in which she plays Federico Fellini) but it’s another step towards reaching a mainstream audience.

The tone of the film moves from the melodramatic to the dry, soap opera to surreal. Maddin has always talked in genres, painted in broad counterfeit strokes. When not making films he generates bizarre collaged artworks that combine the kitsch with the heartfelt, absurd with beautiful. In other words, Maddin has the same practice, regardless of form and if you have a brain flighty and sparking enough to dance between the disparate tones you’ll get a feast. Let’s hope there’s enough of us to allow Maddin to keep playing with a slightly bigger budget, it’s clear he’s enjoying it.