In Rumours, a genre-defying work set at an imagined G7 summit, the United States president might seem as sleepy as the media caricature of Joe Biden. Yet Charles Dance’s incarnation of a figure embodying such stately authority also inexplicably speaks with a British accent. This slippery distinction between reality and surrealism provides a sure sign that the film came from the mind of iconoclastic director Guy Maddin, who co-directed and wrote the project with his former students, Evan and Galen Johnson.

At every step of the way, Rumours thwarts and confounds expectations that this convening of fictional world leaders at a gazebo in the German forest will ever shift into standard political satire. Diplomacy quickly fades from being subject to serving as a mere backdrop to absurdist horror-comedy. As the seven leaders retreat into the forest under the guidance of their host, German Chancellor Hilda Orlmann (Cate Blanchett), their...