THE ADVENTURES OF PRISCILLA, QUEEN OF THE DESERT

THE ADVENTURES OF PRISCILLA, QUEEN OF THE DESERT (Directed by Stephen Elliot. Starring Terence Stamp, Hugo Weaving, Guy Pearce, Bill Hunter, Sarah Chadwick)

Alice Springs may sound like a drag act but is, in fact, the kind of outback Australian town where a man in a skirt seems quite likely to be lynched by his garter belt. Yet this is where the two man and one transsexual drag act are headed on their bus, Priscilla, in Stephen Elliot’s engaging and inventive Witches of Oz comedy.

Like Walkabout in high heels, Elliot places his overdressed queens in the most barren of physical and cultural landscapes, slowly shifting our perspective on them until we are laughing with them, and no longer at them. It is some kind of camp classic, and though never quite as witty as it thinks it is, makes up for any shortfalls with the almost Felliniesque panache Elliot brings to the visuals.

Forget Mad Max, the courage these three show driving their silver bus into the very heart of homophobia marks them as true road warriors. As transsexual Bernadette, Terence Stamp (once dubbed the most beautiful man in the world, but making a somewhat aesthetically challenged woman) gives the kind of performance that can redefine and rejuvenate a career. Graceful, melancholy and endearingly effeminate when so many men in drag go over the top, Stamp gives the film its humanity (and deserves a best actress Oscar nomination at the very least).