It seems strange that with what is going down there are no political satires premiering every week. Representatives and institutions provide material every day so that scriptwriters have their keyboards fuming. This also requires producers who want to get involved in thorny issues, because criticizing the elites always stings a bit. It is easier to attack the ‘rich’, in general, than to put a face and body to those who generate the system where these rich people move like fish in water.
In a Cannes marked by politics. From the war to the strike of the festival workers that has remained just a few protests meters from the red carpet, the event always ends up impregnated with what is happening in the world. As Thierry Frémaux always says, it’s not that Cannes is a political festival per se, it’s that the films always are; and the debate moves from the screen to the viewers.
This year there has been talk, so far, of corruption and repression (in Three kilometers to the end of the world); of those forgotten in the margins (bird); of transsexuality and femicides (Emilia Perez) and even what type of society we want for the future (Megalopolis). But, again, those who have the measures in their hands to change or solve these problems never appear in the story.
However, the festival had prepared a satire where it is not just that they appear, but where they are the absolute protagonists. Is about Rumors -which has been presented out of competition-, the film directed by Guy Maddin together with Evan and Galen-Johnson and whose synopsis already invites rejoicing. The G7, you know, the leaders of the most economically important countries in the world, meet at a summit to draft a declaration on a crisis. What they did not expect is that people around them would disappear and they would face a strange threat that they do not understand.
The proposal of the trio of filmmakers mixes the fantastic with the political, but above all it leaves no stone unturned from its own opening scene, where the cast that will play the presidents of each country is introduced after an ironic sign where they say that they have told with the collaboration of the real G7 for the film. And there, with apocalyptic music, the cast of world stars who have come to play appear before their flags and their lecterns. It is led by Cate Blanchett, one of those actresses who loves to dare, try and have fun. There aren’t many stars who suddenly agree to lead a film where they play an alter ego of Angela Merkel.
She is the German leader and her hairstyle refers directly to the former chancellor. She is also the perfect organizer of the event and the one who calls the shots, much as the French Prime Minister, a hilarious Denis Menochet (as beasts), try to show that you are the one who knows the most in the world and even repeat the phrases that Germany says like a parrot. The plot leaves geopolitical darts in each decision, as if it were innocent that everyone followed Germany like parrots.
Next to them is the Italian president, shown as a stupendous man capable of even forgetting his cell phone at such an important event. The one from the US, played by Charles Dance who speaks with his English accent, which causes a hilarious gag and steals scenes from the film, the Prime Minister of Canada, presented as a handsome guy who has all the presidents and leaders drinking the winds for him. Let’s influence. There are no coincidences in Rumors. The trio of directors mix types of humor, from the most surreal to the political dart, passing through certain winks to the most physical, with Menochet gesticulating as if he were a slapstick. There are also scatological gags (beings from another world masturbating in a group) and some very incorrect scenes like that flirtation on the cell phone.
But what there is, above all, is a reduction to the ridicule of politicians, useless even at finding the exit in a simple garden, and who are not capable of finishing the only mission for which they have been paid for a luxury stay in that German castle: writing a statement against an invisible crisis that is resolved with commonplaces. They never specify what they have to write about, but it doesn’t matter, because their solutions are empty phrases, invisible measures without ever thinking about people. In fact, it is the very people they represent who they are afraid of, as demonstrated by the brilliant decision that when faced with an external threat the first thing they think of is that they are people protesting and demonstrating.
As the characters themselves realize at one point, each leader symbolically represents their country, and how the characters act is an obvious and even simplistic metaphor for the criticism raised by the directors, and there is that old US president. so advanced that he falls asleep in meetings, lets others work and opts to take action and stop fooling around. All with seven actors (plus a cameo by Alicia Vikander) dedicated to delirium, laughter and geopolitical criticism led by an enjoyable and parodic Blanchett. It is true that once the initial surprise and the brilliance of the idea have passed, the proposal runs out and suffers to reach the end, but how good it is when in Cannes you can hear the laughter in a Debussy theater where so much suffering is normally experienced.
