Saturday

MOULIN ROUGE


Directed by Baz Luhmann
Released 2001


El Tango De Roxanne
Backing Track

The year is 1900 and Christian (Ewan McGregor), a grizzled, unkempt British writer who came to the village of Montmartre, Paris at the height of the Bohemian movement a year before, sits in a garret overlooking the closed-down theatre Moulin Rouge and writing on a typewriter. The story he is writing is about both himself and the woman he loved, Satine (Nicole Kidman).
In 1899, Christian arrives in Paris a naive and idealistic writer, and falls in with a group of Bohemians who frequent the Moulin Rouge. They are attempting to produce a theatrical production, "Spectacular Spectacular," which the Moulin Rouge's master Harold Zidler (Jim Broadbent) plans to put on at the cabaret. The Bohemians, chiefly Toulouse-Lautrec (John Leguizamo) among them, are impressed with Christian's gift with words and insist that he write "Spectacular Spectactular." Once they discover that Christian is an amazing writer and should help them with their show, they come up with an elaborate plan of presenting him to Satine, a beautiful courtesan, in the hopes that she will be impressed with him and persuade Zidler to hire him as the play's writer.
Satine understands the mercenary nature of her work, though she dreams of leaving the Moulin Rouge to become a real actress. Through a series of misunderstandings, she mistakes Christian for the wealthy and powerful Duke who will invest in "Spectacular Spectacular," she is charmed by his poetry. She declares that she has fallen in love with him, but is shocked to realize he's actually a penniless Bohemian poet.

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