Cate Blanchett “Wild, Funny Guy Maddin Satire”

“rumor”

cannes film festival

World leaders at the G7 meeting are bickering politely, copulating in the bushes, and delivering boring speeches as the global apocalypse begins – Politicians Yo, they’re just like us! — co-produced Canadian directors Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson, and Galen Johnson’s often hilarious latest film.

Although they’ve been busy with a steady stream of short films, the trio hasn’t made a feature-length production with the actor since Fantastic. forbidden room From 2015. It has a proper beginning, middle, and end, with little homage to silent films or interactive trickery. rumor Perhaps Maddin’s most traditional film to date, or at least since. the saddest music in the world (2003). That is, if you can call this movie, which features furiously masturbating swamp zombies, a giant brain the size of a hatchback, and an AI chatbot catfishing pedophiles, a cliche. Still, even if the energy flags along the way, it’s a big deal.

For those who want to keep score on this sort of thing, this is also the first film directed by Maddin, not to mention brothers Evan and Galen Johnson, to be programmed into Cannes’ official selection. Aside from the fact that it’s a welcome chest-tickler that breaks up this year’s festival’s monotonous procession of poverty porn and disappointed writers. rumor” The path to the Croisette was almost certainly made smoother by the presence of the main cast, including Cate Blanchett, Alicia Vikander, Charles Dance, and French star Denis Menoche (Beau is scary, Peter von Kant). Its cast and festival showcase will do no harm to the film’s commercial prospects. Bleecker Street recently announced that it had acquired U.S. distribution rights.

The satire here is not necessarily directed at any particular politician, given that the characters all clearly live in a fictional world, and ideology seems to matter little. Nevertheless, there’s a definite edge to the way this script, credited to Evan Johnson but based on stories by all three directors, pokes the bear. It’s the bland, non-committal wording of world summits, the promises that mean nothing, and in a world that’s clearly always at risk but is actually on the verge of burning out because of climate change. It sharply derides the accomplishments that are rarely achieved.

The film’s most consistent jokes are the ones that try so hard to make that they go from laugh-inducing, to corny, and then back to strangely hilarious, almost as if they’ve been drained. Yes, but it concerns how seriously the world’s seven leaders take the cliche-filled process of drafting a joint statement. We sit on a small observation deck in the forest and talk, chat, and sing the lyrics. They are divided into subgroups like high school students assigned a class project and are so absorbed in their work that they discover that all of their entourage and servants have mysteriously disappeared and they are left alone in the forest. I haven’t noticed.

In other ways, leaders are like middle managers who enjoy annual meetings with catering, photo opportunities, and time off from troublesome spouses. This is of particular concern to Canadian Prime Minister Maxime Laplace (forbidden room‘s Roy Dupuis rocks an undercut man bun like an aging pop star). Broad hints that Maxim had an affair with goal-oriented British Prime Minister Cardoza DeWinto (Nikki Amuka-Bird) are dropped. This year, he caught the eager eye of host Germany’s elegant Chancellor Hilda Ortmann (Blanchett shows off her strong comedic talents, even in the way she Germanizes vowels).

U.S. President Edison Walcott (Charles Dance, in a sly self-parody) is interested in getting some sleep and keeps nodding off. It may be pure coincidence, but it oddly aligns with what’s going on right now with Donald Trump’s criminal agenda. hush money trial. Another cute gag is that the movie never explains why the American president has such a bad British accent, and is cut off the moment he tries to explain why.

Rounding out the world’s democratic powers is French President Sylvain Bourlaise, led by Menoche, perhaps more so than Japan’s taciturn Tatsuro Iwasaki (Takehiro Hira) and Italy’s bumbling beta male Antonio Lamorte (Rolando Ravello) combined. He is a man of big words who speaks a lot. But the latter two are both ace as slow burns and understated reaction shots, especially Ravello.

Alicia Vikander, speaking only in her native Swedish for a change, appears midway through the film as European Commission President Celestine Sproul, when Maxim discovers the aforementioned giant brain in the forest. I happened to see her with it. Please watch the movie and understand.

What’s really important here isn’t understanding. rumor It operates in its own surrealist dimension, creating the rules of its universe as it progresses. Should we feature people coming back to life in the Boneless Swamp from thousands of years ago to threaten the guests, it asks itself, and the answer is yes, why not? What if the non-source music sometimes swells and explodes, like the music in a melodrama soap opera? Of course!

At times, the whole thing feels like a skit that barely holds together until the filmmakers and cast bring it all home for a great climax. There, all the buzzwords and platitudes are combined into one victory speech and shouted into the air. The world burns. Like the best comic fantasy, rumor It contains more than a grain of tragic truth.