The third film from visionary Australian director Baz Luhrmann, MOULIN ROUGE!, is a hyper-stylized dramatic romp that turns the conventions of the musical genre onto its (glittering) head by mixing a period romance with anachronistic dialogue and songs, reminiscent of the approach he utilized (with great success) in ROMEO+JULIET.

Ewan McGregor stars as Christian, a young Englishman who leaves behind his bourgeois father during the French belle époque of the late 1890s to seek his fortunes in the bohemian underworld of Montmartre. Here, Christian meets the absinthe- and alcohol-addicted artist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (John Leguizamo), who introduces him to a world of sex, drugs, music, theater, and the scandalous dance known as the cancan at the Moulin Rouge, a decadent dance hall, brothel, and theater that's the brainchild of Harold ZidlerHowever (Jim Broadbent), and quickly becomes completely infatuated with the beautiful singer and courtesan Satine (Nicole Kidman, in a career-high). However, she has been promised by the manager to a Duke - in return for funding his next production. As the young lovers meet in secret, Satine's wedding day draws closer but she hides a fatal secret from both Christian and the Duke. The film seamlessly weaves contemporary songs by Nirvana, Madonna, the Beatles, and Queen into a sparkling confection, loosely based on the opera "Orpheus in the Underworld." With Richard Roxburgh, Kylie Minogue.

"A love-it-or-hate-it experience, MOULIN ROUGE! is all style, all giddy, over-the-top spectacle. But it's also daring in its vision and wildly original." (Rotten Tomatoes)

"MOULIN ROUGE! is a tour de force of artifice, a dazzling pastiche of musical and visual elements at the service of a blatantly artificial story." (Variety)

Friday, February 15
Movie 11:55 pm *As this is screening as part of a double bill, the start time subject to change.
Tickets $10.50 advance | $12.50 at the door

*Minors welcome in the balcony! Must be 19+ w/ID for bar service and main floor seating.
**Rio Theatre Groupons and passes OK! Please redeem at the door.

MOULIN ROUGE (Baz Luhrmann, 2001 / 127 mins / PG) A celebration of love and creative inspiration takes place in the infamous, gaudy and glamorous Parisian nightclub, at the cusp of the 20th century. A young poet, who is plunged into the heady world of Moulin Rouge, begins a passionate affair with the club's most notorious and beautiful star.