It's out in theaters Wednesday: "Rumours, All-Nighter at the Top," a crazy political satire with a prestigious cast

Gathered in a castle in Germany for their annual summit, the leaders of the G7 countries sit on the edge of a forest to prepare their statement. As night falls, the group discovers that the staff surrounding them has disappeared. In an attempt to locate them, the seven politicians venture into a forest that proves to be full of peril and mystery.

Four-star cast

A perfectly assumed political satire, Rumours, Nuit Blanche au Sommet seems, in its first minutes, to be in the vein of a Quentin Dupieux film, with its four-star cast, composed, among others, of Cate Blanchett, Alicia Vikander and Denis Ménochet, a pronounced taste for surrealism and its apparent crazy side.

The difference here is that Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson, and Galen Johnson themselves seem overwhelmed by the magnitude of the subject, which revolves around the meeting of various inspired heads of state, of course, real leaders. Not very hard workers, more preoccupied with their own little worries or love affairs, uncomfortable in their own skin, these "characters" suddenly find themselves lost in a forest.

Almost as if it were obvious, the film loses its way at this point. It juggles uneven humor and situations that, at least until the end, are too uninteresting to keep the audience on the edge of their seat. We therefore remember more the actors who put on their little act and seem to be having fun in this choral work, without paying too much attention to the result, aware that they are stuck in a long-winded joke that would have been better suited to a short, or even a medium-length, film.

BY GUY MADDIN, Evan Johnson and Galen Johnson (Canada, Germany), with Cate Blanchett, Roy Dupuis, Nikki Amuka-Bird... Comedy. 1h58. Our rating: 2/5.