Directors: Guy Maddin, Galen Johnson, Evan Johnson

Stars: Cate Blanchett, Charles Dance, Roy Dupuis, Denis Denis Ménochet, Nikki Amuka-Bird, Rolando Ravello, Takehiro Hira

Shades of Buñuel in this absurdist political satire as G7 leaders assemble for a meeting in a manor house in the German countryside to draft a joint statement about the latest global crisis. Cate Blanchett’s Mutti Merkel-like Chancellor Hilda Orlmann is the ostensible leader. Also present are Charles Dance’s inexplicably plummy British accented American President Edison Wolcott and Nikki Amuka-Bird’s fussy British Prime Minister Cardosa Dwindt. Busy with childish squabbling and secret romantic assignations, the group are unaware of the strange goings-on in the forest, as well as a more pressing real crisis evidently going on outside. The satire feels blunt, while the dark whimsy and random gnomic dialogue becomes wearying over an unnecessarily long running time. One of the film’s three directors is singular oddball Canadian Guy Maddin and some of his striking imagery and jaunty editing might have livened up the flat drama, but he is frustratingly muzzled here.

David Willoughby

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