Director: Baz Luhrmann
Year Released: 2001
Rating: 3.0
Stunningly kinetic picture about the famous French bar/club Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec frequented (and made famous with his posters) which has can-can girls and rotund announcers drinking and whooping and hollering ("The show must go on," they often repeat, reminding me of Cabaret). Aspiring writer (Ewan MacGregor) falls for sickly "shining diamond" Nicole Kidman (she looks ... ravishing) and writes show for her - true to musical form, a third party in the love triangle pops up, The Duke, who is the only one that can help Kidman become a star and turn the Moulin Rouge into a proper theater. The plot is, for the most part, negligible - all you need to know is that 'theirs is a love that can never be' - it's Luhrmann's postmodern touches and nonstop cutting and shifting and grand choreography, which has 700 or so dancers losing it in the best way to Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit;" later, a group of men give their own rendition of Madonna's "Like a Virgin," much to everyone's delight. I wouldn't be so quick to call it a masterpiece - it feels a bit long towards the end, and while I continued enjoying the constant stimuli I was sort-of hoping it would just be done with. The actor who plays the Duke seems to be savoring the evilness just a little too much (think Joaquin Phoenix in Gladiator), the I-love-you-I-can't-love-you conversations take their toll. After the screening - to recover - I comfortably stared at a pot of boiling water.
