Stephan Elliott · 1994 · road

Stephan Elliott's 1994 road film. Two drag queens and a transgender woman buy a battered tour bus, name it Priscilla, and drive from Sydney into the centre of Australia for a cabaret booking in Alice Springs. The outback receives them with everything from delight to open hostility, and the trip turns out to be about a son, a marriage and what home is.

1. 1
   Sydney

   Tick takes a booking at a casino in Alice Springs and recruits Bernadette, newly widowed, and the abrasive young Adam - and the three of them leave Sydney in a silver tour bus christened Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.

2. 2
   Broken Hill

   Out past Broken Hill the towns get smaller and the receptions get sharper - a night in a mining pub where Bernadette silences the room, and a morning when the bus is found painted with abuse.

3. 3
   Coober Pedy

   Broken down in the opal country, they are rescued by Bob, a mechanic who knows the old drag circuit - and the film's best sequence has Adam in silver mounted on the roof of the bus, train of fabric streaming across the desert.

4. 4
   Alice Springs

   They reach Alice Springs and the booking, and Tick's real reason for taking it: a wife he has never mentioned and a young son who has to be told what his father does for a living, and turns out not to mind.

5. 5
   Kings Canyon

   The three climb Kings Canyon in full costume, having come the whole way to stand on the rim in heels - a summit that means nothing and everything, and the point at which the bus has done its job.