'Rumours' Is an Off-Kilter Satire Stuffed with A-List Talent

Many films cast great actors in positions of power, conflating their dramatic prestige with a tangible and confident sense of statesmanship. It’s rare for a main cast to consist entirely of leaders of sovereign nations, but a film like Rumours can’t lampoon the po-faced affirmations of progress and unity that fill our airwaves (while the planet burns) without asking respectable and commanding actors to make world leaders look incredibly silly as they scramble to respond to a global threat.

Check out this insane line-up: Cate Blanchett (Disclaimer) is the chancellor of Germany; Charles Dance (Game of Thrones) is the President of the United States; Takehiro Hira (Shōgun) is the Prime Minister of Japan; Nikki Amuka-Bird (Persuasion) is the Prime Minister of Great Britain; Denis Ménochet (Monsieur Spade) is the President of France. It’s a formidable line-up of people who project both measured authority and grace but are just as capable of ironic self-derision.

Take Blanchett, the film’s biggest star – she’s arguably as well-known for her snarky, snippy, and ironic roles in Blue Jasmine, Tár, and that one hysterical Today Show interview with Sarah Paulson and Hoda Kotb than her purely dramatic roles like Elizabeth, Notes on a Scandal, or The Aviator.