20 Reasons Why Moulin Rouge is the Best Movie Musical

Image courtesy of Fox Studios

Narcoleptic Argentinean

When writing this article, I definitely thought I had missed his name all these years and that the character was surely not named the Narcoleptic Argentinean but I was not mistaken. That is, in fact, his name. And really, it is his whole purpose throughout the entire movie.

Most every other character serves some kind of purpose to the overall love story between Satine and Christian. Nina is there for the drama, Toulouse to remind Christian that “the greatest thing you’ll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return”, but the Argentinean? He literally just continually falls asleep.

He has “Roxanne” and tells Christian not to fall in love with a woman of the night but that is probably one of the few scenes in the movie where he doesn’t fall asleep. The best is when he does it during the performance and Christian takes over. Because honestly, why give a lead role to someone who continually falls asleep time and time again?

It is a pretty cool concept though because whenever they need to explain why the writer and the star are rehearsing together, they can just say that the Argentinean has passed out again and they had to make out for their respective roles.