If the gaudy style of Strictly Ballroom could be put down to the idiosyncrasies of ballroom dancers fashion tastes, then the dazzling colours of Romeo & Juliet proved that Baz Luhrmann was a man whose English teacher forgot to teach him the word understatement. Therefore it comes as less of a surprise than it should that Luhrmann’s third film in his ‘red curtain’ style of acting opens with, guess what, a massive pair of red curtains and a maniacal composer, and in case that was too subtle for you throws in a kinetic musical medley of the Sound Of Music and The Can Can during it’s blink-and-you’ll-miss it credits.
The film then slows for a brief period to explain the plot in it’s virtual entirety, a naive boy named Christian moves to Paris to become a bohemian, falls in love with Satine, the star of the infamous Moulin Rouge club, who then dies leaving him heartbroken. The plot over and done with we are then literally thrown through the ceiling to find Toulouse Lautrec staging The Sound Of Music, despite this being the 19th century.
If this all sounds a little crazy then Moulin Rouge! is probably best avoided. The film is a 2 hour audio-visual assault on the senses on a scale rarely seen which blends farce, tragedy and romance with an impossibly deft hand. It’s direction is constantly challenging the audience to keep up and ignore the historical inaccuracies and massive improbability of it all.
For those who are willing to take the film on it’s own terms, and there are many, the reward is one of the most flat out entertaining, enjoyable and moving films ever made. By discarding traditional narrative structure and having as much dialogue as possible expressed in song Luhrmann has created a cinematic rollercoaster that is always plummeting straight to Earth or seems to be preparing to. The story and characters are somewhat stereotypical of the genre (whore with a heart of gold, wide eyed youth, cynical but kind old man, evil courting rich man) but the film uses this to it’s advantage by allowing the audience to fill in the gaps it’s breathless pace doesn’t have the time to itself.
All the lead roles are well played, Ewan Macgregor shows the flawed A Life Less Ordinary was merely an elaborate dry run, Jim Broadbent oozes charisma whilst Nicole Kidman embodies the films ability to balance the sexy, the comic and the tragic as if precision scales were at work. Pure cinema of the highest order.