Director: Stephan Elliott (Australis). Year of Release: 1994
A seedy club in Sydney. We look from behind as someone in a sparkly dress and a blonde wig takes the stage. A record starts to play, and she lip synchs to Charlene’s “I’ve never been to me”. A small portion of the crowd enjoys the performance, but others just carry on playing pool. Then someone throws a can. The singer retreats backstage as the crowd gets increasingly nasty. I guess we can say that the performance has not been an unqualified success.
It’s not the main thing, but could someone please explain to me why I’ve never Been to Me is apparently a gay anthem? Now, I know that it’s supposed to be about a woman emancipating herself blahdiblahdiblah, but it’s such a dirge. Whisper it, bur I’m old enough to remember when it got to number 1. While the chart was full of exciting new bands like Soft Cell and ABC, the chart topper was this maudlin song sung by an old person (I believe Charlene was 27 at the time).
Anyway, back to the film. Mitzi, who sang the opening number is known offstage as Tick. Tick is getting tired of experiences like this, but has just got the offer of a season in Alice Springs. He enlists the help of Bernadette, an ageing trans woman who has just lost her partner and is miserably confronting mortality, and Adam, a young drag performer who is the irritating side of perky, but has actually developed into quite a good performer.
There is the problem of how to cross Australia to get to the venue, but fortunately Adam has rich parents who will invest anything which might make him more “normal”. He convinces them to buy him a tour bus, which they christen “Priscilla”. Priscilla has seen better days and is prone to breaking down, not unlike some of her passengers. But at least the three now have the opportunity to escape their stultifying lives in Sydney.
Adam behaves like an ADHD teenager who has been deprived of the medicines which slow him down. The film walks a tightrope of making him a deeply unsympathetic character yet expecting us to want to spend significant periods of time with him. This is sometimes a chore. Watching the others confined in a camper van with the hyperactive needy Adam, we cannot help but feel sorry for them. Which creates some tension in a film which is largely supposed to be fun.
Priscilla… is more disjointed than I remember, and doesn’t do much new with the conservative form of a road movie. The trio encounter different groups of people, have experiences – some good, some threatening. Then they move on, and continue to bicker in the bus. But the film’s greatness lies less in its form but in its characterisation. The acting is often sublime, and the staged performances are pulled off with aplomb.
This was also a film that needed to be made. In the 1980s, Australian film was largely synonymous with Crocodile Dundee and Mel Gibson. Then, within a couple of years of each other, we saw the release of Strictly Ballroom, this, and – imho the best of them all – Muriel’s Wedding. All apparently minor independent films made on a tiny budget, which managed to address a wider audience with stories of compassion, and made us see new possibilities in film.
Nonetheless it is a film of its time. Sometimes when critics write about films that are a few decades old, they say “you couldn’t say that now”. Ofren, this statement is nonsense. For example, I read one review which said that when Priscilla is daubed with the slogan “AIDS fuckers go home”, this would now result in a justifiable backlash. I don’t know If it would or not, but I believe that the scene remains relevant and necessary to show the depth of homophobia in the post-AIDS climate.
Some things have not aged quite as well, not least Cynthia, the Filipino mail-order bride of Bob, who decides to join them on their trip. Also, the film’s division between cosmopolitan (read middle class) Sydney where you can call on your rich parents to solve any big problem,and the rural mining areas which are depicted as being inhabited almost exclusively by homophobic men and the odd threatening butch woman lacks the nuance that we see elsewhere.
Other aspects would court controversy in 2023. There would and should be justifiable misgivings about the idea of the CIS Terence Stamp playing a trans character. One argument in his defence is that Stamp is surely one of the greatest actors of his generation, and is on great form here. I can think of few actors – trans or CIS, who would be able to pull off as imperious a performance of a performer who has seen it all and is trying to come to terms with advancing age.
More importantly, when the film was made, there we few available trans actors. In the historical context, the decision to cast Neighbours star Guy Pearce as Adam did much more good than bad. In 1994, the post-AIDS anti-gay backlash was harsh, so the decision of a star of popular culture to play a drag queen was potentially career destroying. This means that Priscilla… was a clear step forward, even if you wouldn’t necessarily make the same casting decisions today. Times change.
The early 1990s were not just a time of post-AIDS bigotry. The increased availability of antitretroviral drugs and demonstrations against the right wing backlash meant that LGBT people were starting to come out of the defensive and to do more than just mourn their dead. Priscilla… is both a product and a symbol of a new pride and combativity. In this sense, it is important at least as much for what it represents than for anything we see on screen.
Although Priscilla… was not as great as I remembered it, it does contain moments of greatness, not least in Terence Stamp’s nuanced performance as Bernadette. And when we discover that Tick has a wife he never told anyone about, she steals every scene she’s in. Yes, there is occasional sentimentality, yes not everything works, but the scenes which do more than make up for this. The Abba scene towards the end is worth the entrance price alone.
CinePhil 