I must say that Moulin Rouge took me completely by surprise. From the previews, I thought it would be a standard, boring period piece costume drama, and I had zero interest in it.The fact it was a musical starring Nicole Kidman and Euan MacGregor should have peaked my curiosity but the swings and tophats and coquettish frills just made my mind glaze over. I did not expect the heavily postmodern, oddly effective collage of contemporary love songs delivered in over-stimulating baroque and encrusted valentine sets. I didn't expect that every shot would be pushed to the extreme, each moment of the film an overloaded symbolic allegory to ...something... well, something emotionally hard-core, that's for sure. It's an operatic plot with an audacious amount of dramatic catharsis crammed into every scene. Somehow it's okay. NK is excellent and so is EM. They embody their larger than life characters with never so much as an ironic quiver. (note: just found out the director, Baz Luhrmann, also did "Strictly Ballroom," which I also loved...yeah, I'm a big softie. Hit me with your best shot and paint me with a broad stroke brush.)
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