Click title for showtimes and reviews. The answer, of course, is both. But Luhrmann does throw in the kitchen sink, and he festoons it in diamonds and lipstick and kitsch. His ill-advised choices are so bizarre they can't help but be entertaining, and his willingness to court ridicule is almost touching. The movie is set in 1899 in the legendary Parisian nightclub of the title, which, in this case, looks like the collective vision of Busby Berkeley, Federico Fellini and Madonna, had they dropped acid together and gone to Disneyland.
Love is a many-splendored thing.
Like the rest of the movie, the scene is silly or magical or magically silly, depending on your perspective. The story is more mythic than meaty, the main players less characters than archetypes. When there's farce, it's forced. And when there's movement, which is always, it's hyperkinetic. But it's sensory overload that's giddy, exuberant and gloriously strange.