As a Fridge subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.
- Fridge Logic / Fridge Horror / Artistic License – Biology: The female lead is dying of tuberculosis. The couple lock lips a bazillion times. Not a single person seems the remotest bit worried about infection.
- Tuberculosis is a fickle thing: people Satine was exposed to over a long period of time, like Zidler and the other girls, are more likely to have received it than Christian, in spite of intimacy. He may have had latent TB, alternatively.
- Satine is diagnosed with TB. At the time, it was notorious for being contagious and incurable other than with rest, such as in a Sanatorium. No self-respecting business owner, nightclub or not, would encourage her to continue working with his other employees, let alone a duke and himself. Factor in all the patrons of the Moulin Rouge (many of whom Satine would have kissed or been in some way intimate with) and you have a Typhoid Mary situation on your hands.
- Tuberculosis isn’t actually spread by kissing or intimacy necessarily). Singing and talking on the other hand would spread the disease, so if they got it this would be the way.
- The film is probably inspired by The Lady of the Camellias, which is also about a courtesan with TB, who falls in love with the narrator, and doesn't infect anyone. Plus, Moulin Rouge! is not at all realistic; aside from people randomly breaking into song (and singing stuff that wasn't yet written in 1900), it's quite often almost cartoonish. It should not be surprising that it portrays TB as non-infectious.
- Who says Christian isn't infected? Tuberculosis can lie dormant for many years after infection. He may be heading for an early grave himself, as if the ending of the film needed to be sadder.
- For the Tango De Roxanne, The Unconscious Argentinean casts Nini in the role of Roxanne, an untrustworthy woman who sells herself to the highest bidder. This works as the Argentinian publicly calling her out, and she goes along with it because she doesn't see a problem with her choices.
