Film Review: ''Moulin Rouge''

THE EARLIEST memory of Moulin Rouge which I have is that of a restaurant on Kolkata's posh Park Street. The eatery even had an entrance which resembled a windmill replete with sails.

I suppose there was nothing even remotely Bohemian about Moulin Rouge, quite unlike its namesake, the Parisian nightclub, whose ideals of truth, beauty and love were perhaps as famous as those of the French Revolution.

It is this rather infamous (in a way) French haunt that Baz Luhrmann captures on his restless frames in the film, ``Moulin Rouge''.

Opening the May Cannes International Film Festival and travelling to India very quickly - it is now playing in Chennai and other Indian cities - Luhrmann's work has an American big studio producer (Fox), an Australian actress (Nicole Kidman) and an essentially French subject.

A medley of nationalities apparently sets the mood in ``Moulin Rouge'' for a delirious artifice. There is illusion and magic, mantra and mayhem aiding and abetting a courtesan and a poet in their quest for a few moments of love and passion, which, about all, seems to be the only natural and real elements in the entire movie.

Luhrmann is obsessed with the magnificence of opulence. He is haunted by the ethereal, and he is entranced by exotica. ``Moulin Rouge'' seldom gets out of the flood of colours: the red of the sets contrasts with the white of Kidman's painted face. Digital tricks create unbelievable illusions, and the liberal references to all that is unfairly India and Indian (penniless sitar player and evil maharaja) catapult ``Moulin Rouge'' into the bizarre.

Which is highlighted even more by an impatient camera that hardly ever pauses to let a viewer register a scene or a musical note. Kidman as the Moulin Rouge's star prostitute, Satine, manages to rise above the torrent of words and action, but her poet-lover, Ewan McGregor (Christian on the screen) sinks.

Barring a few shots - where the two are together - Luhrmann's style hardly ever lets us savour the story. ``Moulin Rouge'' eventually turns out to be all spirit and no soul.

Set in 1899 and 1900 in Paris's Moulin Rouge, which then had a reputation as a centre of Bohemian thought, Luhrmann's script talks about a show within a show.

Satine and the owner of the night club, Zidler, seduce a rich duke into parting with his money to transform Moulin Rouge from a temple of sin into a citadel of art. ``Imagine being a real actress,'' Zidler tells Satine.

But when Christian confronts Satine with his true love, she tries spurning him. ``I am paid to make men think that I am in love with them...But I do not want to be on the street...'' she tries pushing him out. Christian cannot be dissuaded.

And ``Moulin Rouge'' continues both as an old world Hollywood musical and a modern pop fare of syrupy romance. It keeps one absorbed in its wave of melodious deceit - it even got Cannes on a high - but at the end of it all, ``Moulin Rouge'' is a shallow effort at mesmerising the audiences with sound and show, but little else.

GAUTAMAN BHASKARAN

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Section  : Entertainment
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