Film - Philip Kerr gets a mouthful of Nicole Kidman
I have read how the British have bad teeth. I used to have bad teeth. Now I have quite good teeth. The transformation has taken several years, the gross national product of Malawi in dental fees, and several hundred miles of floss. In short, my teeth have made a comeback, and I am almost inclined to write an article about it for Tatler. You know the kind of thing - ten pages of trivia masquerading as social commentary and hung upon the peg of some soon-to-be-released movie.
A movie like Moulin Rouge, perhaps - a film I can recommend only to those who have an interest in celebrity dentistry, as it affords many cavernous shots of the mouths and back molars of Nicole Kidman (not so much Eyes Wide Shut as Mouth Wide Open), Ewan McGregor and Jim Broadbent.
As each one of the trio of mouths yawned its way through a selection of cheap but impotent songs in this deafening parody of the Hollywood musical, I found myself reminded of Samuel Beckett's play Not I, in which a disembodied monologue is delivered by an actor of whom only the mouth is illuminated. The director, Baz (Strictly Ballroom) Luhrmann may have been trying to make a similarly Cartesian point about the problem of the identity of the human self from, as it were, the inside. However, I think it is more likely that he must have cut his directorial teeth, so to speak, making toothpaste commercials in Australia. It certainly looks that way.
Broadbent's slack, condom-pink mouth recalls the pre-cosmetic Martin, with his crossed lateral incisors and wonky-looking premolars. McGregor's smile is, as always, infectious; but the metalwork at the back of his mouth might prove to be infectious, too, if those fillings are mercury. Mercury is a neuro-toxin; and I confess I worry for the boy. Nicole's teeth are, needless to say, perfect, and as bright as the halo on an electric Jesus. Nice, healthy-looking tonsils, too. Having seen her take a pee in Eyes Wide Shut, I feel I now need only watch her shave her legs, or blow her unimpeachable, retrousse nose to know what it might be like to be married to this antipodean angel.
I dare say none of these genuinely talented actors could have bargained on the privacy of their mouths being violated quite so often by Luhrmann's relentless use of the in-your-face shot, which recalls Ken Russell at his most vulgar, or Terry Gilliam's animation at its most grotesque. Watching Moulin Rouge, I half expected to see McGregor's tongue being pricked by Michael Gothard's devil-finding needle, or to see his teeth become dancing pianola keys in a performance of Russ Conway's hit "Side Saddle".
As over the top as Dick Fosbury, Moulin Rouge is the Orphean story of a Scottish writer who goes to Paris to find "truth, beauty, freedom and lurve". He finds all four at once in the shapely, peignoir-clad person of Satine, the star of the Moulin Rouge - a nightclub that owes more to the vulgarities of Las Vegas than to the liberties of 19th-century Montmartre. Satine is, we are told, the city's most famous "courtesan". To be strictly etymological, Satine is not a courtesan at all, but an occasional prostitute with a pleasant voice; however, I dare say that Luhrmann thought "courtesan" sounded a little bit classier - which it is, and that is my point.
Anyway, a Scotsman on the make meets a tart with a heart and the two fall in love. But this being Late Empire Paris, and because Luhrmann had doubtless seen the reduced Puccini version of La Boheme, Satine is suffering from that most fashionable of fin-de-siecle illnesses, tuberculosis. And like poor Mimi, Satine coughs her way politely (there is no sputum) through a selection of songs such as "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend" and "One Day I'll Fly Away", while leaving very neat little red sequins on otherwise immaculate white handkerchiefs. You can see the director's dilemma. How else are we to know that Kidman's character is dying when she gives every other appearance of being in robustly gorgeous health? There are more obviously sick girls running marathons.
Luhrmann tries his best to ensure that there is hardly a dry eye in the house - not so much La Boheme as La Boo-Hoo - when, at last, Satine coughs out her last number. As a director, however, Luhrmann has no clubs in his bag but the driver and, as a result, he is quite incapable of playing the chip shots and putts that are required in the more subtle aspects of a story such as this. Consequently, I felt as unmoved by Satine's untimely death and Ewan's Lear-like grief (that's Edward, not King) as if my tiny heart had been frozen.
In the final analysis, the fundamental problem with this film is the music - a mongrel selection of pop hits and misses. Most of these songs would bear repetition only in an elevator, or on a fairground Dodgem ride. But if you are the kind of person who wants to listen to the ephemeral lyrics of Phil Collins, Bernie Taupin, U2 and Dolly Parton used as pseudo-operatic libretto, then this film is for you. Doubtless there exists a youthful, probably gay audience who will enjoy this camp spectacular. But to me it looked like a two-hour pop video and felt like a four-hour rock-opera.
As for my own teeth, they are still on edge, as if I had been pictured leering through a hole that my fire axe had chopped in Shelley Duvall's bathroom door. Come back Andrew Lloyd Webber, all is forgiven.
Moulin Rouge (12) is released nationwide on 7 September
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