Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson & Galen Johnson on Rumours

The first thing you’ll probably notice about the new Guy Maddin film is that it doesn’t look like a Guy Maddin film. For more than three decades, Maddin’s signature has been his delirious adoption of early cinema aesthetics allied to a surreal sense of humour, but Rumours – which Maddin co-directed with regular collaborators Evan and Galen Johnson – looks shockingly like an ordinary movie. “There's no way to justify using archaic, early part-talkie film vocabulary units in something set in the present,” Maddin explains. “I also wanted the challenge of going... the word 'normie' isn't right, but just something that would have fewer alienating effects.”

Yes, as evidenced by the Universal Pictures logo before the film, Rumours is by far the closest to the mainstream that Maddin has ever ventured. However, before we place bets on Maddin dethroning James Cameron as Canada’s most commercially successful director, it’s worth taking a closer look at the film’s content. Rumours is a comedy about a group of clueless world leaders getting lost in the woods at the G7 Summit, and its plot prominently features masturbating zombies and a brain “the size of a hatchback,” while the third act hinges on an AI chatbot designed to entrap paedophiles. “Oh yeah,” Maddin admits with a chuckle. “It’s still plenty alienating.”

The idea of a comedy about the G7 had been percolating for Maddin and the Johnsons for a while, forming a subplot in a screenplay they’d been developing that had sprawled into something unmanageable. They junked the rest and focused on the G7 idea, feeling that this annual meeting of the world’s most powerful people was ripe for skewering. What happens when these leaders are faced with a genuine apocalyptic scenario, and they can rely on nobody but themselves to figure out how to deal with it? The increasingly ragged politicians spend much of Rumours wandering aimlessly in the fogbound forest, futilely attempting to draft a joint statement on the unspecified crisis.

The cast of Rumours. Still: Universal Pictures

Any film about politicians flailing in the face of adversity will undoubtedly be read for its political intent, but Evan Johnson says they were keen to avoid any obvious commentary through their depictions of these international relationships. “We wanted the neoliberal hollowing out that is G7 summits, the empty spectacle and how to make an engaging movie about that, but it means you have to avoid meaning when you can in creative ways,” he says. “Or you can goad people, like, tempt people into thinking, is this a symbol? No, it isn't. And sometimes it is! That's the other thing: there are obvious things in there that are metaphors. There are big clunky obvious symbols in the movie, and yet at times we try to deny that that's true.” Galen Johnson adds: “It's right there in the title, Rumours. It's like, nothing is confirmed.”

Maddin and the Johnson brothers are unequivocal in their praise of their cast, all of whom are terrific fun to watch. The ensemble is led by Cate Blanchett (as the stern German Chancellor), Charles Dance (as the inexplicably British US President) and Denis Ménochet (as the French President, obsessed with sundials). But Rumours is stolen by the hilarious Roy Dupuis as Canadian Prime Minister Maxime Laplace. Largely unknown here, Dupuis is described by Maddin as being as big as Brad Pitt in French Canada, and someone who could “run for Prime Minister and sweep Quebec”. In Rumours, Laplace is the Alpha of the group; a heroic, square-jawed lothario who makes both Blanchett’s chancellor and the British PM (Nikki Amuka-Bird) weak at the knees, and the filmmakers clearly enjoyed placing a fellow Canuck in this role.

“We're Canadians and we're used to needing a Canadian star for our government financing,” Evan Johnson says, “and Roy is our favourite Canadian star. The idea that Canada would be leading was funny because we're like the 7th most important G7 country. Although interestingly – or possibly not interestingly – Canada was invited to the G7 under Pierre Trudeau, because Pierre Trudeau was the most bilingual world leader in French and English and they wanted someone who could help lead the group, so Canada was added. So there's some historical truth to the idea, but for us it was a joke about Canada.”

One wonders what the G7 themselves would make of this lampooning, or the fact that the film opens by thanking the group for their (non-existent) consultation and the poster for Rumours announces itself as The Official Motion Picture of the G7. “Yeah, we just made up this claim,” Maddin admits. “We were surprised that our distributor let us say that.” Evan Johnson adds: “I think we got a note from one distribution person who suggested that you can't say that. But we said it!” Perhaps it's his newfound status as a mainstream studio director that has put Maddin in a particularly bullish mood, as he declares, “I say, G7, lawyer up!”

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Rumours is released 6 Dec by Universal