NYFF Review: ‘Rumours’ Delivers Biting Satire In an Apocalyptic Thriller

Seven leaders of the world’s most prominent democracies (and are they all really democracies?) have gathered in Germany for the annual G7 summit to draft a provisional statement regarding the current global crisis in Guy Madden, Evan Johnson and Galen Johnson’s Rumours. 

Cate Blanchett leads the cast as the German chancellor, Hilda Ortman, channeling her inner Angela Merkel and again proving she has great comic chops and a knack for the zanily ridiculous. The President of the U.S. Edison Wolcott is played by the formidable Charles Dance who, oddly but in keeping with the film’s meta insanity since there’s a joke about it, retains his British accent.

Also on hand are Nikki Amuka-Bird as British Prime Minister Cardosa Dewindt, Rolando Ravello playing the Italian PM Antonio Lamorte, Takehiro Hira as the Japanese premier Tatsuro Iwesaki, Denis Ménochet portraying French prez Sylvain Broulez, and Roy Dupuis, stealing scenes, as the Canadian leader Maxime Laplace.

While these nutbags attempt to put together some semblance of a statement, it becomes apparent that something super strange is going on around them. Cell phone signals are not working. The staff seems to have vanished. Two-thousand-year-old humans are coming back to life…and masturbating relentlessly. Oh, and a large human brain is discovered along with EC secretary general, Celestine Sproul, played by a fleeting Alicia Vikander.

Rumours can be confounding and the first half moves a bit slowly, but it’s also quite mesmerizing and the final hour is chock full of enough doomsday madness to keep the audience intrigued and engaged (as well as confused).

At Cannes, it was confirmed that the title of the film is an homage to the highly popular 1977 Fleetwood Mac album of the same name because of the relationships in flux during the making of that iconic record. Reading this, I was reminded of the lyrics to Stevie Nicks’ “Dreams,” the band’s only number one single:

But listen carefully

To the sound of your loneliness

Like a heartbeat drives you mad

In the stillness of remembering what you had

And what you lost

And what you had

And what you lost

Rumours is a black comedy reminding us of what we have and what we can easily lose, if we don’t act fast, with less ceremony and more zeal.