The film world's most maximalist Baz Luhrmann is not everyone's cup of tea.

His motto is "if you can do something even more glittery, flashy and kitsch, you should".

Anyone who has seen the Australian author's "Red Curtain" trilogy "Strictly Ballroom" (1992), "Romeo + Juliet" (1996) and "Moulin Rouge!" Knows this.

(2001).

If you share that view, "Elvis" is a fantastic film.

A heroic tale in pink polyester with gold sequins, topped with extra everything.

Including a hip hop version of "In the ghetto".

Because where a moderate director

would be content to divide the cinema screen into two or three split screens with a singing Elvis, to show the singer's popularity and many styles, Luhrmann divides it into nine - and puts them into

another

montage.

But why stay there?

He cuts actor Austin Butler's face in Presley's old films, lets the rolling hips be centered in the picture and zooms in on the drops of sweat on his forehead just as the characteristic lids fall down.

All this plus Butler's purely erotic charisma on stage gives a taste of what it must have felt like to be a screaming teenager in the audience in the 1950s.

But Luhrmann

is also a narrator of clarity.

Although the film wants to put Elvis in context, show that he was not only a fantastic artist but also part of a societal development, it becomes a story about a hero and a villain.

Elvis wants to spread love, even physically.

He wants to split racial segregation and show that we can all learn from each other (that one could then also accuse him of using the black music tradition is another matter).

His manager Colonel Parker

(Tom Hanks), on the other hand, is a selfish backslider who uses Elvis for his own gain.

He hinders him in his artistic development, but sees it as Elvis having him to thank for everything.

Like Salieri in "Mozart", it is Parker who acts as Cicero in this saga, he wants us to understand that he had to torment his protégé for his own good.

And he is tormented.

The further the film progresses, the more one thinks about what Elvis

could

have become rather than what he became.

In the final scene, when Butler's acting is mixed with footage from Elvis' last gig, I can not shed a tear.

Or, to use the title of Elvis' finest songs: I Can't help but fall in love.