Winded
Baz Luhrmann's elaborate fantasy musical spins its wheels.

MOULIN ROUGE
With Ewan McGregor, Nicole Kidman, Jim Broadbent, John Leguizamo
Written by Baz Luhrmann & Craig Pearce
Directed by Baz Luhrmann

THE MOULIN ROUGE has never been a place that invites somber reality. Located in the sex-and-neon district called the Pigalle (the Liberty Avenue of Paris), just down the slope from Montmartre (the bohemian neighborhood with its grand white hilltop church), it's vaguely fantastical when you see it first from a distance, the blades of its eponymous red windmill rotating above the muted glaring lights of its entranceway.

In this place, the artist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901) waddled about on his legendary stubby legs, the result of two childhood falls and surgery that didn't heal properly. Here he conceived his post-Impressionist masterpieces while women in black stockings, white bloomers and kaleidoscope lace dresses stepped high to the music of the day.

You get a taste of this "real" fin-de-siècle Paris in Baz Luhrmann’s new movie, Moulin Rouge. But it’s the kind of taste you get at the supermarket from the lady handing out stingy free samples in little paper cups. Most of Luhrmann’s movie is his own razzmatazz buffet of ne plus ultra cinematic styles and sounds - a mutant dreamscape of surreal, unreal, pop, rock, opera, deco, nouveau, po-mo, slo-mo, anachro, you name it - where the show-must-go-on singers break into songs written or made famous by Madonna, Sting, the Beatles, Marilyn, Madonna, Elton John, Rodgers & Hammerstein, Queen, U2 - and oh, did I mention Madonna?

It all adds up to a big imaginative mess of a movie that may possibly entertain you in grudging spurts if you’re willing to go along with Luhrmann’s self-indulgent ride, which takes you on a visual history of cinema, from the silent era and Busby Berkeley right through plenty of swooping and twitchy modern digital technology. But its effect is neither singular nor cumulative, and by the time Luhrmann draws the curtain (literally) on his Grand Imperial Cirque de Paris, you may barely remember a single thing you’ve just seen.

Of course, there’s a central plot trite enough to go along with the movie’s backstage-musical genre. Satine (Nicole Kidman) is the beautiful performing hooker/belle of the fabulous Moulin Rouge dance-hall-cum-brothel, where the elite go to mingle with the Parisian lowlife (sort of like a 19th Century Studio 54). Christian (Ewan McGregor) is a naïve writer, just off the ferry from England, who believes in nothing but love love love. He meets Toulouse-Lautrec (John Leguizamo), who snares him to write the word and lyrics for a grand musical he wants to make about - what else! - l’amour .

This proposed theatrical love story - set in exotic ancient India - delights Zidler (Jim Broadbent of Topsy-Turvy), the owner of the Rouge, who sees a chance to cash in on Satine’s beauty and fame. And Christian’s play eventually delights a wealthy Duke (Richard Roxburgh), who agrees to finance the show as long as he gets to marry Satine when it’s over - although Satine, well-beknownst to everyone but the duped Duke, has fallen in love with her ingenuous writer man.

For Luhrmann, the Aussie (and occasional genius) behind Strictly Ballroom and the Leo version of Romeo & Juliet, love is just an excuse for costumes, drag, high camp, music and dance. But where his earlier films had some balance in their presentation and some basic respect for their material, Moulin Rouge is so frantically photographed and edited that you barely have time to enjoy any of it.

It even becomes painful after a while to watch the actors working so hard and having their work cut up into little pieces. Never is this butchery worse than in a tragic/erotic tango, set largely to The Police’s "Roxanne," and sung evocatively, with a Tom Waits croak, by Jacek Koman. But there’s also a nicely handled - and relatively uninterrupted - medley of silly pop love songs performed by McGregor and Kidman on a surreal rooftop overlooking an even more surreal Paris at night.

In his orange waxed mustache and carnival barker’s outfit, the splendid Broadbent steals nuance from the jaws of obstreperous dramatic death, playing Zidler like the child of Oliver Reed in Tommy and the Mad Hatter of Alice’s looking-glass Wonderland (with a touch of Yellow Submarine creepiness thrown in). He has a rumbling fine singing voice as well. His foil is Leguizamo’s ghastly performance as Lautrec, presented by Luhrmann as a cretin with a slobbering lisp who, in his sole moment of touching awareness, stands alone on a balcony, drinking and weeping, as the two young lovers consummate their hearts.

Of Kidman one can only say what’s already been said of others: She runs the gamut of emotions from A to B, and she swallows her dialogue in her by-now inimitable way. (I laughed when she choked out, á la Elmer Fudd, "The poor Duke is being tweated apawwingwy.") Her singing voice, I suppose, really isn’t so bad, although you can’t quite say she "carries a tune." It’s more like she totes it along behind her, very often hitting some pure and beautiful notes, but here and there screeching, dissipating or flattening out. Her acting is all imitation, although you might generously blame that on what Luhrmann gives to her work with and what he forces her to do with it.

Fortunately, there’s McGregor, an actor so good and a star so appealing that he could make shite taste like filet mignon. His eyes change color naturally with the light, and his voice occasionally soars to Andrew Lloyd Webber-like heights (or, if you prefer, think of Rent instead of Superstar). And despite the drivel he’s given to say, damned if he doesn’t make you believe the whore is breaking his heart.

Will Luhrmann’s colorful bombast be enough to sate a summer entertainment jones? Uh, yes. No wait: No. I mean, yes. Oh, hell: I just don’t know. I’m of many minds about Moulin Rouge. So is Luhrmann - and that’s what kills him. To borrow a phrase: Imagination corrupts, absolute imagination corrupts absolutely. Like a child spinning like a top in the middle of a room, asking the grownups to look at him, Luhrmann passes out after a while from dizziness and exhaustion, and he takes his audience along with him.