The Topp Twins: Untouchable Girls Leanne Pooley, New Zealand, 2009, 84 minutes
Saturday, May 8 | 6:30pm | Vancity Theatre
New Zealand’s favourite singing, dancing and yodeling lesbian twin sisters reveal all in this riotous and rollicking film. From their “coming out” to Jools Topp’s recent brush with breast cancer, Leanne Pooley’s Untouchable Girls is bursting with music, hilarious archival footage and home movies, as well as interviews with the Topps’ infamous comedy alter-egos including Ken and Ken, Prue and Dilly Ramsbottom, Camp Mother and Camp Leader, and the bowling ladies.
Born in a country where sheep outnumber people, Lynda and Jools Topp began their musical careers busking on Queen street in Auckland. After joining the army (“It was a free trip to the South Island,” says Lynda; “Like a sleepover with guns,” offers Jools) they quickly joined whatever movement was going, be it same sex rights, Maori rights, or nuclear disarmament. Described by friend and fellow activist Billy Bragg as “an anarchist variety act,” the Topps leaven their serious political commitment with equally serious mischief. Another comrade puts it more simply: “They’re two very very naughty girls.”
Whatever they’re doing, be it pulling a gypsy caravan via tractor across New Zealand, or performing around the globe, the sister’s boundless energy, musical and political savvy, courage in the face of discrimination and infectious zest for life is like a blast of pure unadulterated joy.
Part concert film, part memoir, and almost ridiculously fun, Untouchable Girls features interviews with the twin’s parents, who are as dryly funny as their daughters, as well as archival footage of the sisters in their farm girl days leaping over fences and falling flat on their faces. But beneath the hijinks and quirky characters, the twins have coped with some truly hard situations, including being on the field at Hamilton in order to stop the Springbok tour of the South African rugby team. Fighting apartheid meant facing down 30,000 angry rugby fans as well as the riot squad. But it was Jools’ diagnosis with breast cancer that proved one of their most difficult and hard won battles. They got through it together in inimitable Topp style.
Untouchable Girls captures the twins at their full-tilt greatest, a juggernaut of celebration and a first-class crowd pleaser.
People’s Choice Documentary Award, 2009 Toronto International Film Festival
“A docu that has you falling in love with two of the crazier people you never met, the Topp Twins… pure fun, very musical, and a can of mixed nuts. What we see are transformations worthy of world-class actresses.”
- Variety
Director's biography
Leanne Pooley is one of New Zealand’s most accomplished documentary filmmakers.
Born in Winnipeg, she immigrated to New Zealand in the mid-1980s and began working in the New Zealand television industry. In 1992 she moved to England where she made documentaries for Britain’s BBC1, BBC2, ITV, Channel 4 as well as PBS in America. Pooley’s films featured on internationally acclaimed series such as Everyman, Modern Times, and 40 Minutes. Her documentaries have screened in more than 100 countries, and include topics ranging from rugby to the Pope.
