Summary
Paris, 1917: while the city’s gaslights flicker like nervous eyelids, Mistinguett—music-hall megastar, queen of the Moulin-Rouge—steps off the stage and into a sepia labyrinth of murder, blackmail and silhouette menace. A vanished chorus girl, a blood-stained fan, a string of pearls that clinks like prison keys, and a trail of violet calling cards pull the megastar into a netherworld where every kickline hides a stiletto. Trading ostrich plumes for a herringbone coat, she prowls backstage corridors thick with greasepaint ghosts, interrogates gigolos who moonlight as morphine couriers, and deciphers sheet-music marked with invisible ink. Around her, the war-time capital is a chiaroscuro carnival: zeppelin searchlights rake the sky, sirens imitate Mistinguett’s own high C, and a subterranean river sloshes beneath the Opera, ferrying contraband coffins. The plot pirouettes from Montmartre rooftops to a shuttered wax museum where cracked doppelgängers of the star witness a final confession. In the last reel, the killer’s motive detonates like a delayed landmine: jealousy over a song that never existed, a phantom melody capable of stopping the war if hummed in the trenches. Mistinguett, triumphant, reclaims the footlights, but the curtain falls on her stricken gaze—she now knows applause is merely the ticking of a prettier guillotine.
