The Topp Twins: Untouchable Girls is a pretty straightforward documentary (in terms of storytelling style) about twins who are certainly forward but hardly straight — or typical in any way. This is not simply because they’re lesbians (which they are), but because New Zealand stars Jools and Lynda Topp defy classification as entertainers and social prejudice, with their surprising mainstream success. As one of their comedian colleagues notes, “on paper yodeling lesbian twins should be commercial death … but they work.” For 30 years the Kiwi icons have been rousing audiences with a mix of country-western, folk, and Beatles-esque melodies; yodeling; dancing; vaudevillian skits; and campy stand-up comedy. The twins belt out peppy tunes in unison while cheerfully strumming acoustic guitars — like their hard-to-get-out-of-your-head anthem, “Untouchable Girls”: “We live in a world that doesn’t care too much, you’ve got to stand up, you’ve got to have guts. We’re untouchable, but we touch, we’re untouchable, touchable girls!”

Dressed in checked Western-style shirts, sporting close-cropped hair, and crooning lesbian love songs or telling raunchy jokes about eating and weight-loss franchise Jenny Craig (use your own filthy imagination), the 52-year-old sisters might easily be pegged as lesbian stereotypes. Yet the musical duo (they insist they’re not comedians but rather “singers that are funny”) are as likely to pack a theater with male steel workers and rural farmers as gay women. In fact, their repertoire of stage characters includes Ken Moller and Ken Smyth — two gruff, swaggering mustached blokes (a sheep farmer and TV sportscaster) who regularly MC at rugby awards and other athletic events. Apparently, even when one of the Kens sauntered into a New Zealand “Showgirls” club, some farmer fans recognized him, invited the good ole’ boy to their table, and spent the night carousing with him — almost as if they weren’t aware, or forgot, Ken was a cross-dressing lesbian.

Flashing between footage of the twins’ mulleted youth in the ’80s and more recent performances, director Leanne Pooley chronicles their career and lives, from street-side busking to publicly protesting in support of lesbian and Maori land rights and Jools’ recent bout with breast cancer. The twins even signed up for a stint in the army, where, as they now quip in their stage act, “you meet interesting people and learn how to kill them.” They’re definitely not Ellen DeGeneres — they take far more risks with their bawdiness and politics — yet somehow they seem as, if not more, broadly accepted and beloved in their homeland as the dance-diva American comedienne and daytime TV talk show host.

The documentary investigates the secret of Jools and Lynda’s success through interviews with their parents, other entertainers like Billy Bragg, and the twins themselves (both as themselves and as socialites Pru and Dilly Ramsbottom or their other comic alter egos), revealing that it may have something to do with their rural roots. Raised on a dairy farm, they’re country girls at heart who dedicated a song to Calf Club Day (when children bring calves they’ve reared to school to be judged). They continue to appear at local country fairs and even toured the golden-green New Zealand back roads on a tractor caravan. But there’s really no mystery to their magnetism. Watch the fun-loving, buoyant, unflappable pair perform and it’s clear why they (and this documentary) are a phenomenon you won’t want to pass up.

Grade: B+

Tags: seattle international film festival, siff, untouchable girls