CDirector Blanchett directed one of the strangest moments at this year's Cannes Film Festival. For British people of a certain age, anyway. Her character respectfully quotes the late Roy Jenkins, the Labor Grand Duke and former Chancellor of the Treasury and Oxford University. Blanchett plays a fictional German chancellor named Hilda Ortmann, whom Jenkins refers to as the first European Commission president to be allowed to attend the G7 summit (as political trivia buffs say) , this is said to be a “smart person”). Maybe in her next work. Blanchett could give a big speech about Peter Shore.
Rumors is a funny parlor-room absurdist comedy co-written and directed by Canadian filmmaker Guy Maddin and longtime collaborators Evan and Galen Johnson. The title was inspired by Fleetwood Mac's 1977 album, which was said to have been accompanied by a mental health crisis. The setting is a forest in the town of Dankelode in Saxony, Germany, where the fictional G7 summit will be held. Seven heads of government met to discuss an unspecified (but clearly ecological) crisis and draft a long and fancifully useless communiqué. As Hilda tweeted to her French counterpart, President Sylvain Bourlaise (Denis Menoche), the communiqué needs to be worded vaguely enough for them to understand. Not committed to specific actions.
U.S. President Edison Walcott is aging and becoming somnolent. He is played by Charles Dance, whose voice is confusingly similar to his own English, but the script includes a running joke about Dance's reluctance (but not inability) to do an overtly American accent. . British Prime Minister Cardoza De Wint (Nicky Amuka-Bird) is tasked with carrying the torch of European Commission Secretary-General Celestine Sproull at the last G7 summit to Canadian Prime Minister and Gentleman Maxime Laplace (Roy Dupuis). She is under stress because she had an affair with her husband. (Alicia Vikander) and spends some time with Hilda. Rolando Ravello plays the nervous Italian Prime Minister Antonio Lamorte, and Takehiro Hira plays the reserved and shy Japanese Prime Minister Tatsuro Iwasaki.
The G7 dinner by the lake is thrown into jeopardy when they discover their cell phones are dead. The chateau headquarters and perhaps the entire town have been abandoned, and they are now completely alone. Except for the 2,000-year-old hominid found embalmed in the Dankelode clay, they have now come to life and are staggering about the place, frantically masturbating. The resulting tsunami of seeds will extinguish the devastating fires and at the same time create a new enlightened people.
This is a very strange movie, a mix between George A. Romero, Agatha Christie without the crime and detectives, and perhaps TS Eliot's The Cocktail Party. Blanchett shows that she's actually pretty good at playing comedy, leading the company through some very funny set pieces. At the dinner, she announces to the six guests that this year's theme for the summit is “regrets,” and that they should go around the table and say what they regret most. Tatsuro says rather charmingly that he regrets not learning to ride a horse. Sylvain begins choking with tears as he says he regrets not being able to truly understand his father. Clearly, the rest of the group feels pressure to say something powerful or moving. Next, the Italian president says he regrets going to a costume party as Mussolini.
The rumors are strange and confusing, and include strange forest encounters and apocalyptic episodes. There's a really weird gag about an AI chatbot program designed to trap pedophiles. Hilda found a goodie bag that all G7 members were supposed to receive. The bag contains cyanide tablets. This provision is now commonplace, she explains. A boring account depicting the cry of the end of the world.
