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Reviewed by Gary Meyer
(12/22/04)
A silver-sequined, silver-turbaned, silver-catsuited figure in full-makeup is perched atop an eight-foot-tall high-heeled shoe that's perched atop a bus scrawled with "AIDS FUCKERS GO HOME." The bus is speeding down an unpaved road in the Australian outback, trailed by a hundred-foot-long silver train billowing in its slipstream. The figure is lip-synching "Sempre Libere" ("Always Free") from Verdi's opera La Traviata (Party Girl). The figure is Guy Pearce, manly star of Memento, Ravenous, and L.A. Confidential, as Felicia Jollygoodfellow.
The bus, dubbed Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, is embarked on one of the greatest quests in movie history, transporting three of Sydney's top drag queens to a casino gig far, far away in Alice Springs, where one of them will have to come to terms with her past. It's an odyssey full of horrors and marvels ("Gabardine! I haven't seen gabardine for years!"). Think of the hobbits' trek to Mordor, only much, much tackier. For Rivendell, substitute the mural-infested hotel. For elven cloaks, substitute the sundress made entirely of flip-flops.
Our fashionable heroines may not have to brave the Balrog in the Mines of Moria, but the population of one stopover town is described thusly: "They get up in the morning, they go down in a hole, and they blow things up." Not the best place to ingest a few party drugs, get dressed, and go cruising. A blissed-out Felicia flirts with the video store clerk who's working on a phallus-shaped candy bar: "Do you have the Texas Chainsaw Mascara?"
Speaking of The Lord of the Rings, look, there's Elrond, aka Agent Smith, in a platinum wig and lip gloss, performing the immortal lyrics:
"I've been undressed by kings
And I've seen some things
That a woman ain't s'posed to see.
I've been to paradise,
But I've never been to me."
--"I've Never Been to Me" by Ken Kirsch and Ronald Miller
Yes, it's Hugo Weaving as Mitzi Del Bra, and one has to wonder whether it was this performance that got Peter Jackson to cast him as a high camp elf lord. After all, Jackson's male elves are always in drag. Mitzi's the one in the middle, the driving gear, and the one with the uncomfortable backstory.
Musically, Priscilla's kitschlicious soundtrack may make you think you've fallen into Dave Barry's Book of Bad Songs. "Billy, Don't Be a Hero" and "Take a Letter Maria" mingle with much less ABBA than you'd expect based on the film's promotion. An attempt at the Swedish quartet's stirring revolutionary anthem "Fernando" is lamentably shouted down. All the ABBA we get, apart from a treasured personal relic, is "Mama Mia."
Terence Stamp (Star Wars: Episode 1 -- The Phantom Menace, The Limey, Far from the Madding Crowd) rounds out the trio as middle-aged drag queen Bernadette Bassenger, who's recently lost her true love. Bernadette is constantly irked by Felicia's relentless irrepressibility and endless pranks. She exacts verbal revenge when Felicia reveals her dream: to climb King's canyon as a queen: "Great. That's just what this country needs: a cock in a frock on a rock."
An ill-advised short cut (Hello! Donner Party. Ring any bells?) leads to a vehicular breakdown and a full-moon alfresco performance of "I Will Survive" in blazing bellbottoms and Beach Blanket Babylon headdresses, possibly the first ever to be accompanied by aboriginal chanting and a digeridoo obbligato.
The trio hooks up with bemused outback mechanic Bob (Bill Hunter). Bob has a wacky Asian wife with a little act of her own, something to do with why the ping pong balls are kept in a padlocked cabinet. Bob comes along for the ride and maybe more.
Production design, costumes, and cinematography take top marks. The inside of the bus is a massive dressing room done up in a tasteful zebra motif, with a year's supply in the liquor cabinet, a mini disco ball, and shoes hanging all the way down one side. The kaleidoscopic performance wardrobe, coiffures, and makeup are simply indescribable. The jagged wilderness vistas, into which Bernadette resolutely strides off for help, stopping only to touch up her lipstick, are beautifully shot. It's the surreal McCoy.
Priscilla never tries to explain why its main characters are the way they are -- they simply are. The flashback in which young Felicia is seemingly about to be sexually abused by a depraved uncle turns into a great gag, just as the film never does what you expect it to. It's not a political diatribe. It's not a psychological study. It's a romp. There may not be any conventional sex scenes, but the performance numbers are the sex scenes -- they sizzle and pop. And not only do our heroines survive, they prevail, proving that drag is divine, fabulous is forever, and sarcasm is mightier than the sword.
