A series of skits incoherently jumbled together.

Rating: 1/10 (12 June 2001)

I am one of those people who is often sucked in by the hype surrounding a film and as such when it fails to live up to the publicity I can sometimes become very disappointed.
Moulin Rouge, at least in Australia, was hyped to the hilt. Posters with declarations like "This is a story about Love", "This is a story about Truth" were around for months. The movie advertisements promised plenty with high octane editing, magnificent costumes and an overwhelming visual and aural energy.
The publicity promised a story as sensual and passionate as the images and sounds the film contains. As such I went in with high expectations of something that would grab me by the throat and drag me into the seady, sexy, dirty, passionate world of the Moulin Rouge. I wanted to become involved, I wanted to see the pure, simple Christian become defiled and debased as he was seduced by Satanic Temptress Satine. I wanted unfair brutality thrown in the face of kindness, complexity into the face of simple ideals and to be burnt by dirty human characters not bored by the flaky caricateurs I see in this film.
The storyline goes like this: Christian, poor writer from London comes to Montmartre Paris presumably to bathe himself in the (allegedly) bohemian atmosphere and lifestyle, the epicentre of which was located at the Moulin Rouge. At the Moulin Rouge he spots Satine, weird red headed woman and star of the Moulin Rouge show. Christian is smitten and in quick time (and thanks to an implausible "twist of fate") winds up meeting the courtesan. Within a few short minutes the two amorous beasts are "in love".
But how could it ever be so simple? Christian can't have Satine without a bit of a custody battle ensuing between himself and the vaudevillian Duke of Worcester, and of course Satine coming down with a "tragic" case of tuberculosis. It all gets too irritating and too stupid. Humourless lines like "You have to hurt him to save him" are juxtaposed against (occasionally hilarious) covers like Madonna's Like a Virgin, which contrasts with the deadly serious Your Song, and the menacing Roxanne. All in all the film should probably leave most in the audience cold, but I doubt it will. More like a fireworks show set to music it can't be seen as a regular movie but more as a series of loosely connected skits, some of which work on their own, some of which don't, but taken all together they just don't fit properly.
The performances apart from Nicole Kidman's are all pretty good, although there is little to no chance for real character development. Richard Roxburgh is probably the highlight with his comical exasperation one of the few emotions you can actually understand and identify with.