CAST:
Hugo Weaving (Tick / Mitzi),
Guy Pearce (Adam / Felicia),
Terence Stamp (Bernadette)

SCRIPT:
Stephan Elliot

PHOTOGRAPHY:
Brian J. Breheny

MUSIC:
Guy Gross

EDITING:
Sue Blainey

COSTUMES:
Tim Chappel,
Lizzy Gardiner

Synopsis:

Australia during the first half of the 90s of the last century.

Anthony ´Tick´ Belrose is a transvestite with the stage name Mitzi Del Bra, who with colleagues and friends Felicia Jollygoodfellow and Bernadette Bassenger earns a living performing in a transvestite bar in Sydney. Mitzi and Felicia, also known as Adam Whitely, and Bernadette, a transgender person, realize that their work is not going well, and they hope for something better. The opportunity to do better will come in the form of an invitation to Mitzi to perform at a casino in Alice Springs, a desert town in central Australia. Having decided and accepted the offer, Mitzi will without much effort persuade Felicia and Bernadette to go on a trip together. For the long and tiring journey across half of the continent, the girls buy a school bus that they remodel a bit and Felicia names it 'Priscilla, Queen of the Desert'. However, the girls do not know that during the trip they will experience numerous accidents and troubles, from a breakdown on the bus to homophobic outbursts in the rural environment in which they will find themselves, to violent attacks. At the same time, each of them will have to face their own demons: Felicia with drug addiction, Bernadette with the awareness that old age is knocking on her door, and Mitzi with the fact that she is married and has a son.

In 1995, she was awarded the Oscar for Best Costume Design, the same year she was nominated for a Golden Globe in the categories of Best Film and Best Actor (Terence Stamp), and nominated for the most prestigious British BAFTA Award in five categories, including Best Actor for Terence Stamp and the Anthony Award. Asquith for Music, an excellent adventure musical-comedy is the most successful achievement in the career of Australian screenwriter and director Stephan Elliott, known for moderately intriguing and entertaining, but overall mediocre achievements such as Imposters, Welcome to Woop Woop, Eye of a Spy and American Bride. The work, which gained cult status in the LGBTQ+ community shortly after its premiere and became a camp classic, deals with stereotypes about trans people in a witty, entertaining and very charming way, while deliberately avoiding superficiality and trivial quips.

In an energetically directed film with a dynamic narrative, extremely moody acting interpretations and great use of natural and given locations, the three female protagonists are not presented unambiguously, as exclusive positives, but as layered, complex and well-rounded characters with their virtues and flaws, which are so human and well known to everyone . Relying on some elements of the cult film Naked in the Saddle by Dennis Hopper, specifically the plot about the non-conformist female protagonists who travel through an area mostly inhabited by primitives, the author successfully profiled the three central characters as well as several secondary ones, and deftly inserted tendentially kitsch and very effective musical elements into the whole. sequences. In addition to the worldwide audience at the time of the premiere of the not-so-famous Hugo Weaving, who a few years later would be crucially affirmed by his roles in the original Matrix and Lord of the Rings trilogies, excellent character actors Guy Pearce (Memento, L.A. Confidential) and Terence Stamp (Modesty Blaise Joseph Losey, Pasolini's Theorem, Steven Soderbergh's Revenge).

color, 104'