Integrated and intersected: Kylie Minogue, Baz Luhrmann and the use of popular song material in Moulin Rouge!

This article complements Rebecca Coyle’s analysis of Baz Luhrmann’s authorial signature in the ‘Red Curtain’ film trilogy (elsewhere in this issue) by reflecting on the involvement of enduringly popular Australian audio- visual performer Kylie Minogue with Luhrmann’s 2001 feature Moulin Rouge! (in which she acted the part of an ‘absinthe fairy’). The article discusses the career trajectory that led Minogue to this role and the manner in which Minogue’s body of work represents a distinct oeuvre that has intersected with Luhrmann’s at various points. Discussion of the ‘absinthe fairy’ scene in Moulin Rouge! also engages with the more recent work that Coyle undertook on the use of music in animation cinema and links this into aspects of the audio-visual heritage that generated Minogue’s fleeting presence in Luhrmann’s film. The article’s focus on these aspects stretches the usual parameters of screen soundtrack studies, reflects on the nature of contemporary screen music performance and provides a case study of the deployment of popular song material in a particularly dense, inter-referential media text.