Film
Moulin Rouge
- Director
- Baz Luhrmann
- Certificate
- 12A
- Running Time
- 128 mins
Baz Luhrmann‘s musical romance has acquired the tag as one of those films you either love or hate. So it’s only fair to state at the outset that this hack loathed it. As an exercise in pure cinematic technique, and a showcase for some superb set and costume design, it’s mightily impressive. At least for the first 20 minutes. Then the horrible realisation dawns that Luhrmann intends to continue in this frantic fashion for the next couple of bum-numbing hours. As with his Romeo + Juliet, the director seems so terrified that his subject matter might bore the target audience that he over-compensates wildly with a barrage of crash zooms, jump cuts and primary coloured kitsch, like a colonial explorer waving a cheap shiny trinket under the nose of a bewitched native.
It doesn’t help that plucky Ewan McGregor can’t sing to save his life, nor that, as is apparently traditional in musicals, the storyline is strikingly banal. It’s 1899, “the summer of love”, and gauche young poet Christian (McGregor) is drafted in to the glizty, decadent world of Toulouse Lautrec (John Leguizamo) and his entourage at the legendary Moulin Rouge, with instructions to write a hit musical. But then he falls for Satine (Nicole Kidman), the club’s most highly paid courtesan, with whom he embarks on a passionate and dangerous affair. Romance and tragedy ensue, along with an awful lot of contemporary pop, ranging from Kiss (I Was Made For Loving You) to Phil Collins (One More Night), and David Bowie (Heroes) to Nirvana (Smells Like Teen Spirit). Not only are the songs used in their own right either for dance routines (the top hat’n’tails Smells Like Teen Spirit being quite striking) and within the storyline (cringe as Ewan serenades Nicole’s with Elton’s Your Song), but the characters soon start spouting lyrics as dialogue too.
This starts off amusingly enough, with knowing quotations from Diamond Dogs and Children of the Revolution, but by the time they get round to Like a virgin/Touched for the very first time, it’s more like a nervous tic than a knowing wink.
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