La Madre is busy brainstorming ways to baby-proof her house, while simultaneously getting excited about picking out her next mother-of-the-bride outfit.Meanwhile, I watched Moulin Rouge.
The set was amazing -- the colors, the costumes, the choreography. I liked the intentionally anachronistic aspect of having rock songs and other pop culture references as part of the dialogue and musical sequences.
But the plot itself wasn't very original. The whole play-within-a-film with a plot that parallels the film's plot has been done before (The King and I leaps to mind, for instance.) The whole "true love wins out" thing has been done before. So has the rising-female-star-must-choose-between-rich-guy-and-poor-guy. Moulin Rouge was extremely predictable in terms of what was going to happen to the characters.
What fascinated me was the weird depiction of a subculture. Though it takes place in Paris circa 1899-1900, the movie seemed to draw on the legend that the 1960s has become. The scene in the beginning, with the absinthe and literal appearance of a green fairy? LSD. The bohemians? Hippies.
Actually, the whole boho aspect irritated me a little. In this movie, bohemians believe in Truth, Beauty, Freedom, and Love (at one point, the bohemian "creed" is called a "dogma"). I'm pretty sure bohemians weren't (and aren't) an ideological or philosophical movement, just communities of artists from largely bourgeois backgrounds that imposed poverty on themselves for the creation of their art.
Then again, maybe I should find and read a history of Montmartre. Maybe I could glean inspiration for the bridesmaid dress...
6 comments:
I read that it was influenced by La Boheme and La Traviata, the opera, which explains the familiar plot. I also read somewhere that a lot of the weird details (like the absinthe scene) are accurate for the time, but mixing them with the anachronisms confuses the imagery.
Excessively romantic as it is, I think it's a clever movie.
Also, tell your sister she doesn't need to babyproof yet. They're not mobile for a long time. (But when they are, beware.)
Yeah, I know the absinthe is accurate for the turn of the last century, I just think the whole bohemian/rebel/artist/drug theme resonates more with a modern audience because of the '60s.
Mom is the one getting excited and baby-proofing the house! She was rushing around saying "We haven't had a baby in 25 years!"
i was so annoyed with the romance plot i couldn't get into the cleverness. i couldn't get past the fact that ewan mcgregor was supposed to be so different from all those lecherous men who only liked nicole kidman because she was beautiful. because, really, he fell in love with her because she was beautiful.
Oh, La Madre. I get it. I thought you meant La Madre Neuva. Neuva? My Spanish is rusty.
And Xtina, Ewan MacGregor fell in love with her because he used the Force, and he'd seen The Others so he knew about Nicole Kidman. Did you see The Others? That's an unexpectedly good movie.
i did see the others. i don't remember much of it. wasn't nicole kidman super strict as a mom? didn't think that'd be too tempting for ol' ewan.
"La Madre" es mi madre! I don't think my sister can count as a mother yet. In 7 and a half months, yes...
That's a good point, Xtina, about how there's really no difference between Ewan and all the other men who ogle Nicole. (I was busy being distracted by the fact that, you know, he's Ewan McGregor....)
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