RUMOURS***

Co-directors Guy Madden (MY WINNIPEG) and Evan and Galen Johnson have created arguably the most absurd, whimsical and batshit crazy film of 2024 in their political satire RUMOURS.  

The movie starts with the G7 leaders meeting at German country estate to draft some kind of vapid communique about an unnamed crisis. Night falls, their phones stop working, fog rolls in, a giant brain appears (!), and the leaders start stumbling through the forest without a clue.  Evidently this is an extended metaphor for the now G-Zero world that we live in, with global leaders incapable of speaking honestly about, let alone solving, the existential crises facing our planet.  How far you find it overstays its welcome and wears on your nerves depends on your tolerance for its bonkers style.  

There are some brilliant set pieces. Cate Blanchett in an appalling German accent asks the Canadian PM if he wants a neck massage like a cheapo seduction scene.  The Canadian and Japanese PMs attempting to sail to help to a faux-moving Enya song. Charles Dance singularly failing to even attempt an American accent for his role as US President. Alicia Vikander in an hilarious cameo as the European Commission President in deep communion with the Brain. And for my money, the funniest of all is the cynical and pragmatic British PM, played by Nikki Amuka-Bird - the audience's way into this nuts story.  

I felt like the story outstayed its welcome but I liked its audacity and tone.  The more extreme the concept, the shorter the running time should be.

RUMOURS is rated R and has a running time of 104 minutes. It played Cannes 2024 and opened in October in the USA and earlier this month in the UK.

BY THE GRACE OF GOD / GRACE A DIEU

Francois Ozon's BY THE GRACE OF GOD is a film that stands apart from the rest of his oeuvre.  Showing he can match his style to the subject, he has made a sober, reflective, beautifully paced and acted film about the most serious of topics - that of child sex abuse in the Catholic Church, and to compound that crime, its institutional cover up for decades.  By now we are sickeningly familiar with the story of paedophile priests being found out, and simply moved on to another parish to commit their crimes on another unwitting flock.  We are familiar with the heartbreak testimony of survivors and the seemingly interminable process of bringing these men to real criminal (as opposed to ecclesiastical) justice. But this film remains compelling because it's such a delicately, beautifully mined character study of how a group of men cope differently with their abuse.  And despite the darkness of the material it's ultimately a quiet film that builds to something rather hopeful and wonderful  - as these men form a kind of familial supportive bond. That might or might not be enough for all of them to pull through their trauma, but it's in this carefully mined character study that the film is at its most compelling.

BY THE GRACE OF GOD has a running time of 137 minutes.  The film played Berlin 2019 where it won the Silver Bear. It also played the BFI London Film Festival. It is now on release in the USA and in UK cinemas and on the Curzon Home Cinema streaming service.