'El Tango de Roxanne' Moulin Rouge! Review

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El Tango de Roxanne

Baz Luhrmann’s multi-million dollar musical Moulin Rouge premiered at the recent Cannes Film Festival and opened in Australia a few weeks later to a tsunami of media attention. Rupert Murdoch, who financed the $US50 million film at his Fox Studios in Sydney, led the Moulin Rouge media battleship with front-page stories and encouraging reviews such as “the coming of age of Australian film”. Critics hailed the film as “garish”, “vulgar” and “a mish-mash of ghastly costumes and sets”. Critics were sharply divided; rival newspapers assailed the film as “an  nightmare”. Murdoch’s film critics fought back stating it was “richly cinematic” and “the greatest Australian movie ever made”.

The movie is set during the  around the time of the French Revolution where the aristocracy was overthrown and France was heralding equality. Also, at this time, a Bohemian uprising was underway! The Moulin Rouge is a lewd cabaret club in the  district of . Christian (Ewan McGregor) is a young British playwrite who had defied his father’s wishes and gone to Paris to find true love, where he encounters bohemian artist Toulouse-Lautrec (John Leguizamo) and composer Erik Satie (Matthew Whittet). Christian composes a play called Spectacular Spectacular, and him, Toulouse and Erik plan to sell their play to Harold Zidler (Jim Broadbent) owner of the Moulin Rouge. Toulouse organises a personal meeting with Satine (Nicole Kidman), a courtesan who has plans to become an actress, but unbeknown to Christian, Zidler had also arranged a personal meeting with The Duke of Worcester (Richard Roxburgh), who is interested in turning the Moulin Rouge from a brothel into a theatre.

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Satine mistakes Christian for the Duke and tries to seduce him in order to secure the investment to turn the Moulin Rouge into a theatre. Christian and Satine are caught by the Duke in Satine’s private quarters, a giant jewel encrusted elephant suspended above the Moulin Rouge. With the help of Toulouse, Zidler, Erik and the Unconscious Argentinean they improvise a script for Spectacular Spectacular set in India with a penniless satire player, a courtesan and an evil maharaja, in order to cover up what was happening. Christian falls in love with Satine and he sings his feelings out to ...

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