This postmodern musical traces a mythologized love story – that of the doomed affair between a naive young writer (Ewan McGregor) and a nightclub courtesan (Nicole
Kidman) in 1899 Paris – but its true concerns are strictly aural and visual: the way the vibrant colors of a cancan dancer’s dress meld into a moving rainbow when she twirls; the way the yearning of a young lover’s voice cracks midsong, as if his heart skipped a beat. Style alone is the often-glorious substance of Moulin Rouge.
