Word: luhrmann
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...starts hitting U.S. theaters May 18, the musical will probably have both critics and audiences debating whether it is art or just arty, and who knows if it can compete with the summer blockbuster bullies. This much is certain: you've never seen anything like it. Directed by Baz Luhrmann (Romeo + Juliet), Moulin Rouge is a postmodern, absinthe-fueled journey through the titular Parisian nightclub at the birth of the 20th century, set to mid- and late-20th century pop songs. Kidman stars as Satine, the doomed, ambitious courtesan torn between a penniless writer (Ewan McGregor) and a sugar-daddy...
...test began two years ago during the last act of her marriage. Kidman was on Broadway, starring in The Blue Room, when flowers from Luhrmann, an old Aussie acquaintance, arrived in her dressing room. "I'd never got a box of long-stemmed red roses," she recalls, beaming at the memory. "The card said, 'I've got a great character for you,' but then he made me audition...
...anyone can bring pizazz to this decrepit genre, it's Baz Luhrmann--the mad Aussie who, in his 1996 Romeo + Juliet made Shakespeare play like a psychedelic rap video. The idea here was to take a plot that crosses 42nd Street with Camille and, he says, "steal bits of culture from the 20th century and use it to make a code, a software, to access emotion and character...
...movie's first moments (a skinhead in a tux conducts the Fox fanfare) cue you to Luhrmann's boldness. A Green Fairy sings The Sound of Music. In the nightclub, Nicole Kidman evokes Marilyn and Madonna as she swings above the crowd warbling Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend. Ewan McGregor, as the poor writer who falls for the courtesan, is a nouveau Gene Kelly--a hunky Joe with a radiant smile, haunting the Left Bank like An American in Paris, twirling an umbrella a la Singin' in the Rain. There's something else deja vu about this pair...
...Luhrmann will never be guilty of visual understatement (his name could be Luridman), but he and his wife, production designer and costumer Catherine Martin, have found an intelligent nexus of sense and sensibility. They have created a fantasy Paris where everything is not only possible but gorgeous as well. The camera hovers over a cityscape that looks like a perfect cardboard diorama. Dancers' skirts swirl in Impressionist pixilation. "Don't wanna listen?" the film seems to ask the musically challenged viewer. "Then just watch...