Not far off the back of her disastrous foray into video game adaptations with Borderlands, Cate Blanchett returns to the big screen along with an all-star cast in the Comedy/Horror, Rumours. Blanchett is joined by the likes of Charles Dance and Alicia Vikander in the ensemble of this Canadian/German co-production. The film takes place during the annual G7 conference, this year taking place in a haunted forest in Germany, where the leaders of the 7 wealthiest countries in the world meet to organise solutions to large global issues. The leaders are left in a gazebo to commence their talks and discuss the most recent crisis, when they start to realise that they may have been abandoned and the forest's dark past comes to haunt them.

As soon as the film starts, the effort put into the cinematography and lighting is painstakingly apparent. The opening sets up a dark and eerie thriller with its crisp editing and stark red titles, accompanied by an ominous score, as the film goes on, there's several shots where the colouring is used to fantastic effect and they wouldn't be unwelcome as a desktop wallpaper.

The ensemble cast are all fantastic at portraying the national leaders. Credit goes especially to Cate Blanchett who plays the German Chancellor, a sort of an amalgamation of Sandra Huller and Angela Merkel. Her accent wavers slightly into caricature territory but she transforms from the Australian actress into an organised and sensible German leader. The weakest link in the cast is Charles Dance, sadly given his stellar track record. It's not so much his acting ability that lets him down and more his complete lack of accent work. Dance plays the American President, who while being an old, decrepit and narcoleptic veteran of politics is clearly meant as a parody of Joe Biden. This parody would have worked better if they hadn't cast one of the most British actors of a generation in the role and not given him the slightest hint of an American accent. There's even a scene early on where Dance's character adorns himself in a Stars and Stripes napkin, as if the directors felt the need to make it clear he was in fact the US Head of State. It's terribly distracting and is even brought up by the Italian leader but this question is never answered, a lot like many of the film's other lingering mysteries.

Rumours‘ biggest flaw is its script. The film builds up several mysteries about the story, the characters and the setting and none of these are ever answered satisfactorily. There's an argument to be made for films that leave their endings up for interpretation but then there's films like this where there's not even a hint. This results in a film that has a great build up with a great sense of intrigue that will leave the audience unsatisfied and ultimately bored at the end. As the film essentially boils down to 7 world leaders walking around a dark forest for 90 minutes. It feels like the film is meant to have a message of some sort, possibly to do with the G7 conferences being essentially pointless, but the script isn't witty or even sure of itself enough to let the audience know what that moral may be.

Rumours is a beautifully crafted, well acted but ultimately empty political satire. Cate Blanchett can add her performance to her show reel but it's not the biting attack on the current political climate that it wants to be.

Rumours is playing at the London Film Festival 2024 and will release in UK cinemas on 6th December