Chaotically Correct Queer Joy
A Formalist (& Genre) Approach to The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994)
The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994) – Formalist
Happy Second Week of Pride Month, darlings! After last week’s much more personal jaunt into 1969 with The Gay Deceivers, I thought we’d take a camp road trip into the Australian Outback with Stephan Elliott’s The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994). The Review Roulette wheel landed on Formalist for our approach, but I also have a fair bit I want to say about how this film fits into its Genre, so this will have more of an even split between sections.
Disclaimer: This film is absolutely fabulous and available on Tubi and Roku and Peacock at least. If you are looking for a deeply wonderful time, call Felicia (Guy Pearce) and stream this movie. Do note, though, there are some somewhat distressing moments that I will discuss further in the Genre section below.
The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert is a film that predates To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar (1995) and is Australian specifically, just to get that out of the way. I rarely review films outside of Hollywood, but this one called to me with the smooth dulcet tones of a stunning Terence Stamp and the grating Fran Drescher-esque laugh of a young Guy Pearce in drag. For those unfamiliar, The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert is about two drag queens, Anthony/Mitzi (Hugo Weaving) and Adam/Felicia (Pearce), and a transwoman (by today’s parlance) Bernadette (Stamp) going on a cross-country road trip from Sydney through the Outback to perform their drag show in the Northern Territory. The trio board a busted camper bus christened Priscilla, Queen of the desert who gradually undergoes a drag makeover herself throughout the film.
Thinking of form in this film, there are two things to say. Firstly, as I am not a scholar of Australian film but rather a casual viewer with only 10 or so titles (film and tv) to compare this to, I will boldly say that this film thoroughly matches the vibe of other Australian comedies I have seen. It edges on surrealist sometimes in a way you aren’t quite sure if it’s actually happening, but it is. It always is. The humour will make you go “Jeeeeesus” before you feel it appropriate to laugh, and the jokes move at a clip just like the editing. The film begins rapidly giving you no time to settle in before jolting you forward in a way that truly does feel chaotically correct. It’s quite a remarkable thing to move so swiftly and then, in key moments requiring it, to slow down to near-still images. It creates a cadence that captures you emotionally and moves you gracefully through the chaos and surrealism in an excitingly gentle way, reflecting the beauty of the chaotic tenderness of the queer trifecta at its heart.
Secondly, as a specific example of that reflective cadence, the film uses that form to make a further statement on the existence of LGBTQIA+ people. While inevitably stranded in the Outback for part of the film, the cadence begins to slow as though the heat of the desert is forcing it (and Priscilla) to a standstill. In this period, there is a long sequence of Mitzi in full lime green, corseted drag practicing her routine to Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive” out on a sand dune. Interspliced between this elaborate, almost surreal imagery of Mitzi are shots of lizards and ants and desert plants as though Mitzi herself is one of the most natural things in the world. That inclusivity of Mitzi among the beings that are meant to be in the desert is a strong statement of the existence of queer identities are normal and natural and so chaotically correct as the rest of this bizarre and beautiful world. As much of the film revolves around acceptance and where people like Mitzi, Felicia, and Bernadette “belong”, this multi-minute sequence of naturally occurring phenomena in the middle of the movie feels like a purely pointed pause in the rapid cadence of the rest of the film.
In other sequences with such subtle uses of the surreal, The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert has so many moments of beauty and humour and understated power given over to the resilience of these Queens. I really do highly recommend this film for a fun Pride Month watch if you’ve never seen it. I had a thoroughly lovely time watching it and for some of the reasons I will state in the next section…
[Contains light spoilers]
Because I’m Never Done When I Say I Am
Genre
One thing I really loved about this film is that it subverts a lot of tropes of queer representations in cinema. Commonly with queer characters and storylines, especially since the start of the AIDS epidemic, there is a level of trauma and death present in queer stories. In older cinema, particularly prior to the mid-1960s due to the Hays Code, queer identities were largely obscured and euphemistic, normally as part of the villain’s identity, if present at all. There are often trauma narratives of what “made” someone queer in their childhood, and instances of assault and/or depravity that have been present in homophobic accusations for millennia, long-before the idea for the video camera was ever conceived.
The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert takes each of these tropes, begins to lead you into them, and then shatters them and celebrates queer joy instead. The film builds to this quite suspenseful climax and then completely undercuts it with a tone of “of course it worked out, why did you think it wouldn’t?” almost daring the audience to question why queer protagonists cannot have a happy ending. In the very beginning, just a few rapid cuts into the film, Bernadette is burying her young husband in a scene that many viewers would expect to be a result of the very recent AIDS crisis, but this is quickly subverted with a different, almost humorous cause of death instead, signalling to the viewer that this is not *that* type of queer film. There are several instances when this kind of set up for a common tragic queer trope is swiftly undercut, save for one moment later in the film that plays out a bit differently but still builds to that overall message negating and disproving the belief that queer identities can only be shown in films if questioned, quieted, or killed.
One other point to make about the subversion of this film is the dynamic between the trio. The two drag queens are eccentric with different levels of flamboyancy but are still quite gregarious characters. Bernadette, on the other hand, is almost always wearing neutral colours, demure and measured in every interaction, never rushing anywhere. She is the epitome of class. This portrayal of different types of queer identities so thoroughly fleshed out is refreshing to see. Further, Bernadette is so strikingly portrayed by Terence Stamp, an ostensibly straight cis man who was already quite famous and established in his career. He was a suave villainous type and even played General Zod in the Christopher Reeve Superman films (1978 and 1980), and yet he subverted that identity of his career (and quite riskily) and the age-old homophobic trope of villainous queers to portray a transwoman so sensitively but with so much power.
There’s so much to say about the attention to detail in and the multi-faceted layers of The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. I really loved this film and if you have seen it or do see it after reading this review, I would really love to hear others’ thoughts on it. In the meantime, have a wonderful, beautiful, chaotically correct Pride, my loves!