Rumours review – an absurdist satire of the G7 summit that should make us all a bit afraid

To qualify for the “Group of 7”, where world leaders discuss global economic policy and major international problems, you must be one of the seven richest capitalist nations on the planet (at the moment the line-up is Great Britain, France, Italy, Germany, USA, Japan and Canada).

There’s no doubt that getting seven incredibly powerful and busy leaders to sit together and talk is a significant geopolitical occurrence, but 50 years on from the its inauguration, it’s clear the group has failed to meaningfully address issues like climate change and world hunger.

Rumours, the absurd fantasia from bonafide Canadian weirdos Guy Maddin, Galen Johnson and Evan Johnson is set during a fictional G7 summit. Stuffy statesmen and women descend into panic and derangement when a fantastical apocalypse isolates them from their staff. It illustrates how self-serving the ruling class can be, while they preach unity and democracy.

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The starry, international cast includes major talents like Cate Blanchett playing the chancellor of Germany and Charles Dance as America’s senile president, with Nikki Amuka-Bird as the prime minister of Britain and Denis Ménochet as the French prime minister, who turns into a babbling cryptologist trying to decode the strange, fantastical occurrences as symbolic mirrors of their shared geopolitical history. (This feels like a hint that interpreting the plot as direct political commentary is a waste of time.)

Rumours is not political in a partisan sense, but it does satirise the gulf between the existential danger to our planet and how out of touch our powerful protectors can be.

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The world leaders smile and hold hands around a gazebo table in a pristine garden; they talk about past G7 statements like they’re deciding their favourite Beatles album; they divvy up speech-writing duties like school kids working on a group project. There are romantic confessions and playground friendships – plenty of trivial, silly details that underline how funny and frustrating it would be if our leaders acted like proper grown-ups in the face of global collapse.

The legacy and ceremony of the G7 is fetishised, even after “bog bodies” roaming the woods like horny zombies and a giant gelatinous brain has driven the Secretary-General of the European Commission (Alicia Vikander) insane.

We are not in safe hands, is the troubling undercurrent to Rumours’ sketch-like comedy. It will resonate with audiences who have wondered, through pandemics, recessions and global conflicts, whether these diplomatic ceremonies and hierarchies get in the way of making the world a better place.

Rumours is a successor to Stanley Kubrick’s brink-of-war satire Dr Strangelove, now playing on London’s West End courtesy of Armando Iannucci and Steve Coogan. In the film, atomic-age America is threatened with armageddon, and the military officers and politicians (pastiched by Peter Sellers and George C Scott) respond to the emergency in vast sequestered crisis chambers, revealing just how inevitable such a disaster was.

DrStrangelove and Rumours benefit greatly from isolating themselves from, well, normal people – homing in instead on the self-defeating and narcissistic personalities that cannot cope with a crisis that isolates them from their supporters.

The recent US election was a depressing reality check. Trump’s appearances at G7 summits were notoriously difficult and his re-election spells doom for future meetings. There are no raving, dangerous Trump-like characters in Rumours. The dignitaries are relatively harmonious and diplomatic, even if none of their actions rise above meaningless back-patting.

In the face of certain ruin, Rumours imagines our leaders making a joint statement at the end of the world, to be read by no living survivors, but at least it’s adorned with an official letterhead.

Rumours is in cinemas from 6 December.

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