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Tick/Mitzi (Hugo Weaving) attempts to become more ‘masculine’ in the eyes of his son Benji (Mark Holmes), but the boy reassures his father that he accepts him as he is. Mitzi then joins Felicia (Guy Pearce) and Bernadette (Terence Stamp) in full drag for the climb to the top of King’s Canyon, thus fulfilling Felicia’s ambition.
Curator’s notes
There’s a sly joke in the way the scene is filmed, to remind us of the disappearing girls in Peter Weir’s film Picnic at Hanging Rock. Nevertheless the ascent of this spectacular landscape by the three men in drag costume is still kind of thrilling. Way beyond the incongruity of the scene, there’s a strong sense of achievement – they have survived. The film came out in 1994, 14 years into the AIDS epidemic, which had already killed millions of people worldwide. The majority of those who died in Australia were gay men; the backlash against gay sexuality had been strong in some quarters. Priscilla was a kind of proclamation, in its own way, of the indomitability of gay culture in Australia.
