A scene from Rumours (Bleecker Street)

Director Guy Maddin’s name might as well be synonymous with the term “acquired taste.” Borrowing techniques from silent films and classic melodrama, filled with otherworldly imagery and weird sex, sometimes with intentionally stilted acting and damaged-looking frames, he has carved out a filmography that is like absolutely nothing else. No one in their right mind can be surprised that not all filmgoers are on board. Yet for his admirers, and I am one of them, his films are at once hysterically funny, mind-bending, and unexpectedly poignant. The Saddest Music in the World, Tales from the Gimli Hospital, and Cowards Bend the Knee are affecting in the wacky ways they cast light on obscure corners of the mind and heart. He has said, in conversation with Isabella Rossellini, that good melodrama is not the truth exaggerated, but “the truth uninhibited.” You could argue that this is what his best films, with all their wildness and weirdness, have achieved: He has made a place where forbidden thoughts and desires walk free.

Rumours, his new film, is something of a departure. Maddin has recently been working with co-directors Evan Johnson and Galen Johnson, and this new effort feels like a conscious attempt to break patterns he may have felt too settled in. It is shot digitally, in color, without any particular funny business regarding editing or clarity of image. While there is no real absence of strangeness, it is much more restrained than previous efforts. It is in this sheen of seeming decorum that this new film has its irresistible charm.

The leaders of the G7 forum (the wealthiest liberal democracies in the world) have gathered in the German woods to create a “provisional statement” regarding a current, unspecified global crisis. They bear themselves with comic dignity and an air of professionalism and speak with nostalgia of summits gone by. Though it is clear that this is a group rife with petty rivalries and not-so-secret affairs, they act like old colleagues with a dedication to decency. The representatives are played by Cate Blanchett (Germany), Charles Dance (the USA), Nikki Amuka-Bird (United Kingdom), Roy Dupuis (Canada), Tatsuro Iwasaki (Japan), Denis Ménochet (France), and Rolando Ravello (Italy).

This being the work of Maddin, the characters speak in a heightened manner, and there are plenty of odd little details before oddness threatens to take over. The U.S. president, for instance, speaks with an English accent; the woods sometimes shine with unearthly light; and the chancellor of Germany introduces her guests to a recently discovered bog-corpse who is, shall we say, disfigured in an unusual way. Their conversations do not always make sense. Still, it is not until strange noises are heard in the woods and a group of walking corpses, a giant brain, an official (Alicia Vikander) who appears to be delivering prophecies in gibberish but the language is actually Swedish, and the mysterious desertion of their staff derails and makes a mockery of their attempts to draft a provisional statement.

The point is made quickly and clearly that those in charge of the fates of nations might simply be bumbling in the dark like the rest of us. Yet what really delights the audience is the film’s refusal to make symbolic or literal sense for both the viewer and the characters. There is a crisis—the dead are walking, a brain is perhaps issuing commands from the woods—but there is no way of knowing what it means or what its implications are, and when answers (of a kind) start to show, it is unclear if they are unambiguously sinister.

All of this is set against the unrelenting uprightness of its principal characters, who remain committed to the inherent dignity of their task. Unlike many of Maddin’s previous films, the figures themselves are more prominent than anything depicted visually. Certainly, there are a few shots of them trailing through the woods, surrounded by vegetation and colored light, but there are long stretches of time where the film feels like a conversation piece. Strange things emerge (brains, zombies), but never take center stage.

While there were times I was waiting for the unrestrained quality of Maddin’s earlier efforts, all of the above struck me as supremely right. It is as though Rumours is as determined to remain as upright as its characters in the face of incomprehensibility. Like its world leaders, the film can’t do this credibly, and the result is as oddly endearing as it is hilarious. For this reason, the film succeeds on its own terms. And, if I may prefer the films which made his name, Maddin and his collaborators have given the viewer the gift of not staying quite the same. That and a defiant chuckle in dark times.