Priscilla, a Rainha do Deserto

When few countries were pushing the boundaries of the LGBTIQ community this beautiful movie tested the waters. It made Australia grow up in an era when economically everyone wanted to go back to a more comfortable time. It came out around the same time as Muriel's Wedding which is equally about a run down family of characters who are better when they come together. This movie is a prime example of Australian cinema.

Two drag queens (Guy Pearce as bitchy Felicia, and Hugo Weaving as Mitzi) and a transsexual (Terence Stamp, marvellous as the widowed Bernadette) make a trip to Alice Springs in a pink bus called Priscilla.

Cue a soundtrack of mostly Abba songs (plus an off-the-cuff 'I Will Survive', and C E Peniston's 'Finally' - a great set-piece) and three towering performances. From the initial hilarious premise we follow the trio through the Australian desert and meet the various inhabitants of places they pass through. It remains fast-paced and touching within the comedy. Wonderful.

What unlikely trio to fall in love with, just as unlikely as the landscape. When a movie fits so well without a tag that links it to anything else in its historic film context, it can only be described as a happy accident. Premeditated for sure, but accident nonetheless. Terence Stamp, is an actor with a spectacular career. Varied and surprising. It defies description, but let me try. Peter Ustinov's "Billy Budd" William Wyler's "The Collector" Federico Fellini's "Spirit of the Dead" John Schlesinger's "Far From The Madding Crowd" Pier Paolo Pasolini's "Teorema" Joseph Losey's "Modesty Blaise" Oliver Stone's "Wall Street" Stephen Frear's "The Hit" Richard Donner's "Superman" "Steven Sodebergh's "The Limey" Am I making my point? He is an actor for all seasons, beautiful beyond belief to boot. In "The Adventures of Pricilla Queen of The Desert" he unveils another unexpected side to his considerable talents. A Woman. And what a woman, a Meryl Streep with a past and, thanks to director Stephan Elliot, with a future. Dressed by geniuses. More human than ever. He is flanked by two spectacular Aussies. Hugo Weaving (The Matrix) giving a performance of such tenderness that even my brother in law, a homophobic macho man of the first order,loved him. And Guy Pearce (L A Confidential) He is such a beautiful,sexy, funny girl that made me long for a her/he all to myself. Some other monstrously cloned movies were rushed into production trying to capitalize on the success of Pricilla. They all failed miserably and rightly so. Frank Capra, accepting his AFI Lifetime Achievement Award sent a profound and heartfelt advise to young filmmakers. "Don't follow trends, start new ones" Well done Mr Elliot. Well done.

1994 proved to be rather a good year for Australian movies, with both this and MURIEL'S WEDDING delighting international audiences with their cheeky over-the-top humour, panache, pathos, winning performances, and fun soundtracks. Both, of course, heavily featured the music of ABBA (Australia has long had a particular love-affair with the Scandinavian quartet - it was probably no coincidence that it was decided to shoot the group's own feature, ABBA: THE MOVIE, during the Australian leg of their 1977 world concert tour). In MURIEL'S WEDDING the band's music is perhaps treated with more reverence and respect - Muriel Heslop is, after all, a huge fan, and the film itself is of a far more serious, distinctly black nature. PRISCILLA, on the other hand, constantly revels in its own bitchiness and catty humour, and has countless memorable, and in many cases unprintable, lines of dialogue, including stabs at the supergroup - "I've said it once and I'll say it again - no more f***ing ABBA"; "What are you telling me - this is an ABBA turd?" Of course ABBA is merely one of MANY verbal targets for the film's three main protagonists, but far from this alienating us from any of them, we cannot help but be swept along by the sheer garish joy of the entire venture.

The basic plot focuses on recently bereaved transsexual Bernadette (a magnificent, hardly recognizable Terence Stamp), who teams up with two younger drag artistes, sensitive Tick/Mitzi (Hugo Weaving) and screaming queen Adam/Felicia (Guy Pearce), so that they can travel half-way across Australia on board an all but dilapidated bus named "Priscilla", in order to perform a cabaret act at a remote casino run by an ex-partner of Tick's, soon revealed to be, horror of horrors, a WOMAN! Along the way they encounter all sorts of absurd situations and individuals almost as strange and unconventional as they themselves are, whilst Bernadette, against her better judgement, falls for gruff mechanic Bob (Bill Hunter, who also features in MURIEL'S WEDDING) that they pick up en route, and in so doing he loses his "mail-order" bride Cynthia (Julia Cortez), who in one especially memorable scene does things with ping-pong balls you just don't want to imagine!

The performances are really the thing here - Terence Stamp (who won numerous accolades for his cast-against-type labours) is amazing and totally credible as the quietly dignified transsexual, and it is hard to believe that Weaving and (especially) Pearce have not worked as flamboyant, lip-synching drag queens all their professional lives! The gaudy, outrageous costumes won a well-deserved Oscar, and the photography of the barren, surreal landscape is also masterful, as is Stephan Elliott's creative direction and hilarious, ultimately poignant script. The soundtrack may not be to everyone's taste, but it has enough camp classics to satisfy anyone yearning to relive the tacky heyday of the '70s - including ABBA's "Mamma Mia", the Village People's "Go West", and Gloria Gaynor's superb "I Will Survive", given a gloriously inventive rendition to a bunch of appreciative aboriginals, with one of their number joining in most enthusiastically.

A true kitsch classic, then - well worth re-visiting, again and again ... and again.

...and that's a GOOD thing. Basically, before I truly became aware of "Priscilla", I had only thought of its three central actors as just regular, boring guys who were fine enough at acting, but really weren't anything special. Wrong. I had heard about this mysterious movie once or twice, but had no idea who was in it, nor what it was about (beyond the rather vague concept of drag queens/transvestites), and when I decided to read more about it, and find out who was in the cast - SURPRISE! Guy Pearce (of whom I had had a bad first impression when I discovered him in that travesty "The Time Machine"), Hugo Weaving (Agent Smith himself!!!), and Terence Stamp (whom I don't think I ever saw in any films, but whom I still knew a fair bit about)! How genius is that? I had to see this to believe it, and when I did, I was not let down! Beautiful scenes, costumes, dialogue and music made this probably one of the most interesting and memorable movie experiences of my life! I wasn't the least bit uptight about it (as some people were turned off by the flamboyant behaviour and distasteful jokes, which I found refreshingly great!), and delighted in the campy antics of this fantastic trio! It's a beautiful, feel-good comedy that I recommend to anyone with a catty sense of humour (and a VERY open mind).