Topp Twins Triumph

 

A pair of 51-year-old Lesbian twins who’ve been “out” since the 70s have triumphed in a doco Variety magazine critic John Anderson raves “has you falling in love with two of the crazier people you’ve never met.”

Following its screening at the Toronto Film Festival Anderson says the 84-minute life story of the country-music and yodelling sisters, The Topp Twins: Untouchable Girls, “could well add Jools and Lynda Topp to a list that includes spring lamb and “Lord of the Rings” — that is, gifts from New Zealand to a world that usually doesn’t pay it any attention.”

Winning Ways of Love

And the conclusion critic Anderson reaches? The film “lays the evidence before us and lets us draw our own conclusion: that the indefatigably cheery and witty Topp Twins got that way through love.

“Musically, the pair resemble those American pop icons Phil and Don Everly; they sound like one voice harmonizing with itself. During an ’80s period in which they wore slicked hair and suits, they actually looked like the Everlys.

Untouchable Girls tells the sisters’ life story — from their farm-girl days to their work on behalf of Kiwi gay rights; from their ’80s appearances at anti-Springbok rallies to their relationship with their parents, who dealt with their two daughters’ homosexuality (a son is gay, too) with total support.

Warped Kiwi Humour

Yodelling lesbians shouldn’t work, says Anderson. Yet Jools and Lynda “have become crew-cut demi-goddesses in a country where the national character includes a warped sense of humor.”

“We’re not comedians,” Lynda Topp says. “We’re singers who are funny.”