"Moulin Rouge" is a vivacious bombardment of song, passion, dance and all things above else. Located in Paris during the bohemian revolution in the late 1800s, the viewer is absorbed into the exuberance of this whole story straight from the start. An Englishman enticed by the idea of becoming a bohemian writer moves to Paris for inspiration and befriends a gang of idealists with ivory towers as their sanctuaries. Encouraged to join them in their bohemian revolution, he is taken to an underground club, Moulin Rouge. He then has the worst and best night of his life, meeting his one true love, only to find she is a courtesan and in the hands of a Duke who is infatuated with her, with the deeds to the Moulin Rouge. Mistaking the Englishman as the Duke, the courtesan falls in love with him and results in a three way relationship. All lies on the succession of the play which the Englishman must write to save the club. The story of the play is improvised and created on the situation he and his lover are in. The plot then revolves around the fictional play and the actual story between the penniless writer and the courtesan, resulting in a tragic ending.
The genres revolving "Moulin Rouge" are plenty to discuss. It is a typically Broadway musical brought to screen. The colours are exotic, sensuous and rambunctious. All matching the seedy and eroticism the Moulin Rouge held when it was in its peak, when ".the rich played with the young and beautiful creatures of the underworld". The music is big and brash followed by scenes with an expected climax. However, with the main female character dying in the end, it breaks away from the typical triumphant end of the musicals seen of the past and some of the present. The genres are typical in a romantic sense, the friends Christian, our main male character befriends are interfering and overly outspoken however have their good intentions. They stay loyal to Christian in the end.