The 79th Cannes Film Festival is upon us and, as ever, Elisa is on the ground to report directly from the Croisette. Sadly, most of us can only watch from afar. For years, I struggled with festival-related FOMO, but one little annual series here at The Film Experience has helped combat it. Obviously, I’m referring to “Cannes at Home,” the rubric I’m happy to revive once more, perusing past films from the various cineastes in the Main Competition that are widely available. Alas, it’s very rare for a title vying for the Palme to open celebrations at Cannes, and this year is no different. Pierre Salvadori’s The Electric Kiss marked the fest’s official start, but it’s playing Out of Competition so the director’s work won’t be showcased here, in “Cannes at Home.”
Instead, let’s rewind to 2001, when the Cannes Film Festival celebrated its 54th edition. A quarter century ago, the Opening Film was actually among the competition lineup. It was none other than Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge!, the best movie musical yet produced since the millennium changed. Damn, 21st century cinema peaked early…
Much has been written, discussed, and hand-wrung about the lack of Hollywood studio productions premiering at the Croisette this year. After the festival has become something of a launchpad for awards campaigns in the past few seasons – a horrible thing if you ask me – it seemed like the ties between Cannes and the most mainstream parts of the industry were tighter than ever. Apparently not! Not only did the studios turn their avaricious gaze away from the French Riviera, but even the competition slate is uncommonly bereft of American auteurs. Only James Gray and Ira Sachs will be in attendance, and the former was a late addition to the official selection.
History is cyclical, so it’s good to remember that 2026 isn’t the first time the entertainment media stressed about the lack of American productions at Cannes. This was also a concern at the tail end of the 1990s. So much so that, for the 54th edition, there was a concerted effort, behind the scenes, to bring Hollywood stars and the popular interest they entailed back to the festival. The festival’s General Delegate and all-around mastermind Thierry Frémaux has been open about this in recent retrospectives about the 25-year-old edition. As a result, Shrek was a Palme contender, along with Lynch, the Coen Brothers, and Sean Penn.
Oh, Baz Luhrmann was there, too. He’s not American, but at the time his latest extravaganza involved a good deal of American money. It was to be the closing act on the director’s Red Curtain Trilogy, a follow-up to Strictly Ballroom and Romeo + Juliet where the maverick director would pull inspiration from the Orpheus myth and his own reinvention of Puccini’s La Bohème at the Sidney Opera House, telling the story of a penniless poet falling in love with a courtesan in fin de siècle Paris. Also, one should account for significant influence from the movie musical tradition as a whole, as well as the 20th-century pop songbook.
Moulin Rouge! is one of those filthy jukebox musicals and, as far as I’m concerned, the best example of the form since Gene Kelly took a twirl under milky rain at the MGM backlot. It all started way before the genre was seen as a viable investment for Hollywood bigwigs - Moulin Rouge!’s own box-office success would help turn the tide on this issue. Even Baz Luhrmann has admitted he’d grown up hearing about movie musicals as something of a joke. Many still see them as such. Many saw it like that when this magnum opus was but an inkling of an idea, too. That did not stop him from loving them, nor from dreaming of directing his own silver-screen song-and-dance fantasy.
And so it was that, after years in development hell, many workshops and whatnot, plus an unexpected delay due to the director’s dad passing just as the shoot was about to commence, production kicked off as 1999 drew to a close. I won’t bother you with more behind-the-scenes business. If you’re interested, go read The Guardian’s oral history write-up or, better yet, dive into the treasure trove of special features that furnish most of Moulin Rouge!’s physical media editions. However, it’s important you realize how risky a prospect this whole thing was. Moreover, Luhrmann isn’t a director who’ll cater to expectations, much less to general ideas of respectability and prestige.
There was no way as wild a swing as this would ever be well-received by critics at large, especially those that watched it premiere at Cannes 25 years ago. The jury, presided over by Liv Ullmann, didn’t care much for it either, awarding it zero prizes. The Academy was much more generous in that regard. When the awards season finally started, Moulin Rouge! came recommended by the favor of mainstream audiences who flocked to theaters. All in all, the movie earned eight Oscar nominations, including in Best Picture and Best Actress for Nicole Kidman. In the end, designer extraordinaire Catherine Martin took home the project’s only statuettes, coming out victorious in the Best Art Direction - Set Decoration and Best Costume Design races.
I come to you with all this context and historical retrospective because I have already written plenty about Moulin Rouge! over the years on this very site. Last time, I went deep on Kidman’s performance for the not-so-mini miniseries we did about her in 2024. Furthermore, it’s difficult to find ways to re-articulate why this movie means so much to me. I was seven when it premiered and, at the time, my cinephilia was still in its infancy, if not outright dormant. It was only when I was twelve that my best friend and I started lending each other DVDs and gushing about our shared love of musicals that I first laid eyes on Moulin Rouge!. It was love at first sight.
Truthfully, this write-up should be included in our Over & Overs team project. Re-watching the movie today, I certainly felt the weight of all the years popping this disc into my player and marveling at the madness that Luhrmann and company beget. Not in a bad way, mind you. More in the manner that I found myself mouthing lines that I knew were coming, anticipating specific cuts within the kaleidoscopic montages that sometimes feel like being shot at by a cannon of pure overstimulation. Even sound effects or particular inflections, the pop of pink here, the odd unfocused cutaway there.
The movie is seared into my brain like an unfortunate image burned onto a flat-screen TV. Well, it’s fortunate in this particular case. Because who wouldn’t want to live with Moulin Rouge! permanently stored in their memory bank. Not me, that’s for sure, though I’m well aware this isn’t a movie for everyone and can understand those alienated or downright exhausted by its assault on the senses. And yet, despite knowing every beat from heart, the movie still manages to dazzle, sometimes surprise. As the state of Hollywood filmmaking continues its descent to digital dereliction, the textural qualities of Moulin Rouge! feel ever rarer and more exquisite. Despite the quick cuts and frenzied pace, every shot is laden with visual information.
It’s weighty, exuding the materiality of real sets and costumes and a flaming Rita Hayworth red wig, tears and sweat, glistening under harsh lights and the patina of 35mm film grain. Compositions are precise when you’d expect mess, all attuned to the rhythms of an edit that comes across like controlled chaos of the highest order. Even the phony-looking effects, those primitive CGI collages, add to the experience. For example, one can’t question why Satine and Christian fall in love in the span of an Elton John song because it’s right there on screen. It’s there in the transcendence of physical fact, when even the stylized sets aren’t enough, and we must jump into the night sky turned dancefloor with Méliès’ moon cameo-ing in the corner.
The film thrives on the tension between fakery and truth, between radical artifice deployed to convey emotions so raw they can only be articulated by going beyond reality. Consider the setting of an Australian Paris, high on the opium of Hollywood dreams, through which the camera moves as if possessed by the demonic presences from The Evil Dead. The humor that manifests in these stages isn’t even screwball, as it goes further still, becoming Looney Tunes-esque. The passion is heightened, as well, beautifully crazed. Heavens, it’s manic, a musical on the verge of a nervous breakdown whose very images already seem halfway lost in the haze of lunacy.
Watching it makes me feel breathless. It makes me feel overwhelmed in the best way. Because Moulin Rouge! is euphoria distilled into celluloid form. And not just the euphoric high one associates with joy. No, no, for there is also the euphoria of a great tragedy and the surge of catharsis that comes pouring in, tasting of tears. There’s the euphoria of believing in the power of love, naïve as that might seem, for as long as the screen glows and the movie stars sing. I could drown in these images and these songs, sight and sound, Stendhal Syndrome all the way to the grave. And what a glorious way to go it would be.
Moulin Rouge! is available to rent and purchase on Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV, and Fandango at Home. The featurette-stuffed Blu-ray is currently sold on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other sites.