Could this film <i>be</i> any more gay?

Iain R. Webb10 April 2012

There can?t be much that hasn?t been said about Baz Luhrmann?s film, Moulin Rouge.

While the critics have discussed and dissected, the fashion pages have shown us how to get Nicole Kidman?s corseted look with a little help from Agent Provocateur. But there is something that no one seems to have mentioned. Something that dare not speak its name. Hey, Mr Luhrmann, how gay is this film?

From the sweeping orchestral version of The Hills are Alive (yes, with the sound of music) to the tip of Ms Kidman?s extended drag-queen eyebrows, the film is as camp as a row of Kylie hits. In fact, Minogue appears in a cameo role as the Absinthe fairy, flitting about in a spangly corset with wings attached.

From the onset (it?s a musical ? who goes to see musicals?) Moulin Rouge is a wonderful celebration of the camp excesses of gay culture. Of course, you don?t have to be gay to go to see it, but it certainly helps. When I went, the young lady who accompanied me overheard a conversation between two women in the toilets afterwards, which opened with: ?As soon as I heard that music at the beginning I knew I wasn?t going to like it.?

Maybe a) they don?t have a sense of humour between them; b) they?ve never been lucky enough to spend a sleepover at a gay friend?s house listening to show tunes while dressing up in boas and fishnets; or c) they?ve never sashayed into the halfworld that is Soho on a Saturday night. Where have they been?

Moulin Rouge is brimming with more feather boas and fishnets than a Gay Pride march, but that?s not the only reason why campsters will love it. Apart from the macho male tango dancers who, in their sweaty vests and braces look like so many Dolce and Gabbana models, there?s the tragic love story.

The film is a fast-cut, roller-coaster ride of wild women cancan-dancing as if their lives depended on it as well as those of their lusty, top-hatted and tailed suitors (did I really see a few of the chaps wearing tutus?). Moulin Rouge is dark and decadent (not since the film Cabaret have so many stocking tops and undergarments been so effectively laced with sinister overtones against a musical backdrop), but if the look is glam and glitzy, it?s the unabashed, die-hard drama queens? soundtrack that will undoubtedly get the gay vote.

At the beginning and end of the film, the plaintive strains of Nature Boy tells the tale: ?There was a boy, a very strange, enchanted boy.?(OK, so it?s Ewan McGregor?s face on the screen, yet what better description for any young man who dances like Janet Jackson, dresses like David Beckham, gives advice like Anna Raeburn and dishes out one-liners like Big Brother?s Brian Dowling.) When Satine, played by Kidman, first appears on a trapeze dripping in diamonds she mouths Marilyn?s Diamonds are a Girl?s Best Friend (always a give-away) before morphing into Madonna?s Material Girl (oh, please), decked out in plumes.

Did anyone mention gay icons? In another scene, Jim Broadbent, who plays Zidler, the Moulin Rouge?s impresario, drags up as a bride. Wearing a lace tablecloth wrapped around his head, he sings Like a Virgin while a troop of waiters in white aprons high-kick around him like the Tiller Girls.

Later in the film, McGregor prances on the smoky rooftops, waving a pink umbrella aloft before partnering Kidman in a dance routine under a shower of glitter. It?s pure Fred and Ginger (I think it?s safe to say that Kidman is Ginger).

The love duet between McGregor and Kidman goes further, plundering every song you?ve ever played while pining in your bedroom, from One More Night through Don?t Leave Me This Way to Your Song. However, it?s the moment when McGregor breaks into Up Where We Belong while doing a pretty good impression of Leonardo in Titanic (standing with arms outstretched on top of an elephant) that outcamps the lot. Way to go, Ewan. Way to go.

There is a darker side to a film that holds up the gay world and reflects it in a cracked mirror ball. The Moulin Rouge nightclub is described as a ?kingdom of night-time pleasures?; Spectacular Spectacular, the gilded, all-singing, all-dancing Busby Berkeley-meets-Bollywood production in which Satine stars is ?a show about love overcoming all obstacles? (try homophobia and the Conservative Party for starters). When Zidler advises Satine to break off her doomed relationship with Christian he utters the immortal line: ?We?re creatures of the underworld. We can?t afford to love,? echoing the words of some of the greatest gay writers from Jean Genet and Christopher Isherwood to John Rechy.

It is McGregor and Kidman?s love song, Come What May, that seals the deal. In the drama, it works as the couple?s theme song ? a swirling, high-camp ballad which, whenever sung or heard, reminds the pair that, in the face of all adversity, their love will survive. The song is not exactly Gloria Gaynor-anthemic, but it does feature the line ?no mountain too high, no river too wide?, throwing a telling reference to the classic Ain?t No Mountain High Enough by that other gay icon, queen of soul, Diana Ross. A song that has been performed time and time again by drag queens in fancy feather boas, fishnets and tight corsets, long before Luhrmann ever put pen to paper.

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