“It’s better to burn out than to fade away” is both a Neil Young lyric and the quote that encapsulates the ethos of “Rumours,” an extremely funny geopolitical satire from the fertile imagination of Guy Maddin, the Canadian experimental filmmaker who once put Isabella Rossellini into a pair of beer-filled glass legs.

There are no prostheses, see-through or otherwise, in “Rumours,” though there are substitute delights: a brain the size of a Volkswagen Beetle, a chatbot designed to ensnare pedophiles and mummified Iron Age corpses. All these creations bedevil the seven fictional heads of state who have convened at an annual G7 summit hosted by Germany, whose randy leader (Cate Blanchett) can’t wait to get it on with her sexy Canadian counterpart (Roy Dupuis). Over a lengthy lunch in a gazebo at a woodsy estate, the seven struggle to draft a joint statement on an unspecified global crisis, unaware that their anodyne musings on peace and prosperity will soon be derailed by mud-splattered mayhem and onanistic zombies.

Sporadically ingenious, occasionally chilling and entirely bonkers, “Rumours” sees Maddin (writing and directing with his longtime collaborators Evan and Galen Johnson) abandoning his more familiar black-and-white, silent-film aesthetic for vibrant color. His fondness for soapy melodrama and bawdy humor, though, remains intact. Canada and Germany slip off for some sylvan slap-and-tickle, unnoticed by Canada’s former lover, the uptight United Kingdom (Nikki Amuka-Bird). Back at the table, France (Denis Ménochet) and Japan (Takehiro Hira) are bonding over historical speeches, while Italy (Rolando Ravello) is repenting for having once dressed up as Benito Mussolini. An apparently addled United States (Charles Dance, who remains however resolutely British) just wants a nap.

Shot in Hungary, Stefan Ciupek’s richly textured and often surreal images drive a mood that darkens inexorably from goofy to skin-pricklingly ominous. As night falls, the seven find themselves abandoned in the forest with neither cell service nor servants.

Maddin responds to the call of the weird with a refreshing lack of pomposity. At the same time, this film’s utter contempt for our leaders’ ineptitude, expressed in the hilarious sight of a circle of bog men frantically masturbating over a campfire, is strangely bracing. And, given our present moment, stomach-churning: We are all too well acquainted with political fiddling while our world burns.