AFTER the Grimm fairytale romance of Strictly Ballroom and the bullet ballet of William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet, song-and dance renaissance man Baz Luhrmann completes his "red curtain trilogy" with his most madly theatrical movie so far.

Not since Ken Russell has a director let his lurid imagination run so wild with such bravado, and Luhrmann's sensory pleasuredome is seemingly under the influence of an elixir, or maybe Puck's love potion, to match the drink-and-drugs orgy that was fin-de-siecle Paris in 1900. Indeed, absinthe might well make the heart grow fonder for Moulin Rouge!

The exuberant Luhrmann reprises his relish for risking a seemingly incongruous yet romantic mix of the old fashioned and the modern, ancient myth and contemporary lore, here binding the tale of Orpheus and Eurydice to the bohemian Montmartre of Toulouse Lautrec and the camp, nay gay, music of such 20th century icons as Elton John and Madonna, sung by the unlikely pop posse of Nicole Kidman, Ewan McGregor and Jim Broadbent.

The plot is simple, indeed too simple in the film's only design fault, as poor boy McGregor falls for abused, ambitious beauty Kidman, whose future is already parcelled up and posted to a rich, cruel duke (Richard Roxburgh).

More precisely, impoverished poet and composer Christian (McGregor in earnest Christopher Ecclestone mode) joins diminutive painter Toulouse-Lautrec (John Leguizamo) and his Bohemian set of style gurus to mount a show at the Moulin Rouge, the Studio 54 of its day.

There, Kidman's slinky and soulful Satine is the consumptive torch-singing star turn and queen of tarts but, with the saucy night-club in financial free-fall, the master of ceremonies and proprietor Zidler (Broadbent) pimps her to the highest bidder, the mean and merciless financier Worcester (Roxburgh). Satine inevitably falls for sweet, nave Christian but how can there be a happy ending when everything has its price even in the capital of romance?

This pivotal love triangle should provide the emotional ballast but it is suffocated by the surfeit of often wonderful and witty visual gags and the audacity of Luhrmann's breathtaking direction and restless camerawork in which he edits scenes with the energy of the Moulin Rouge windmill in a storm.

Buried beneath the glitter and gimmickry is a cry from the heart on behalf of the struggling artist, but thrill-seeking Baz is always busy setting up the next big number, be it ringmaster Broadbent's manic appropriation of Madonna's Like A Virgin or McGregor's wooing of Kidman with Elton John's Your Song.

The sumptuously costumed, high-kicking Moulin Rouge is the film musical for the MTV generation attention span: a triumph of style over content, but what style.