Art-house films: ‘The Topp Twins,’ ‘Disorder’

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"The Topp Twins: Untouchable Girls"

Updated: August 19, 2011 12:16AM

Opening this week on the local specialty film circuit:

‘The Topp Twins: Untouchable Girls’ ★★★

Leanne Pooley directs an appealing documentary that does not really go anywhere or make a point, yet it’s so darn fun to spend time with the likable stars of “The Topp Twins: Untouchable Girls.” Jools and Lynda Topp, lesbian twins from a New Zealand dairy farm, sing country-music tunes, often with autobiographical and political themes. Their albums include “Flowergirls and Cowgirls” and “No War in My Heart.”

The Topps regularly perform benefit concerts for causes. They supported civil rights for gays and land rights for Maoris. They opposed French nuclear tests in the Pacific and South Africa’s apartheid policy when the Springbok rugby team toured the Kiwi nation. Too bad Pooley fails to sketch out these resonant episodes in New Zealand political history. She does sample some pointed lyrics and protest footage, but offers little offstage context.

The Topps’ various comic personas in concerts, though, introduce some of New Zealand’s social stereotypes. They include Ken and Ken, a sheep farmer and a TV sports personality, in their male impersonator act. Playing society ladies, they circulate at a real high-society affair. These affectionate send-ups earned the sisters a television series. Coiffed and costumed, the alternate Topps then humor Pooley’s camera with in-character interviews.

“The Topp Twins: Untouchable Girls” rewards with a sense of intimacy that turns sober when Jools undergoes treatment for breast cancer.

The women are natural-born entertainers. The film features a rich archive of performance footage that documents every decade of their career. Jools expresses their activist credo as performers: “There are some times [when] getting people to laugh, the whole crowd, that’s about the most political thing you can do.”

No MPAA rating. Running time: 84 minutes. Opening Friday at Facets Cinematheque.

‘The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu’ ★★½

What can you discover about a dictator from his official footage? Romanian-born director Andrei Ujica edited a thousand hours of archival films to create the three-hour “The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu.” This historical exercise is a follow-up to Harun Farocki and Ujica’s “Videograms of a Revolution” (1992), a compilation of unofficial video shot by Romanians when Ceausescu was deposed in 1989.

Ujica’s new work begins and ends with video of Ceausescu and wife Elena rebuffing taunts before their execution. The rest of the film is a chronicle of a 25-year reign as represented by speeches, pageants, inspections of flood and earthquake aftermaths, state visits and international trips. We see the dictator with Charles de Gaulle, Mao Tse-tung, Kim Il-sung, Imelda Marcos, English royals and Presidents Nixon and Carter. On a trip to Hollywood, Ceausescu’s film crew records him aboard the Universal Studios Glamor Train.

Most revealing is the footage of him playing volleyball. He is awfully unskilled. And he cheats by pulling the net. No penalties are imposed.

Ujica fails to edit his material with any discernible agenda or artistry, though. Repetitive staged events do not accumulate to create any particular atmosphere. This ironically titled “autobiography” does let its subject get the last words, when he counters all the accusations hurled his way as “lies, mystifications, provocations!”

No MPAA rating. Running time: 180 minutes. In Romanian, with English subtitles. Opens Friday at Gene Siskel Film Center.

‘Disorder’ ★★½

This uncanny montage of Chinese street scenes with an unclear message consists of sensational and surreal footage that Huang Weikai assemble from 10 different individuals. But the outcome of this verite essay is not what the title implies. “Disorder” is less a critique of the organization of the city of Guangzhou than a gazette of odd incidents.

It looks as if Huang altered all the video to make it uniformly black and white. He may have digitally added grain for a gritty filmic effect, too. Most of the events in view, though, look like local news outtakes, not random acts of shooting by curious bystanders. The film’s U.S. distributor, dGenerate Films, claims “Disorder” is composed of “amateur” footage.

“Disorder” begins at night with a huge geyser in a street: a burst water main. More watery scenes follow: a cockroach surfaces in the soup at a restaurant; residents wade through flooded streets; a man casts a fishing net over a blocked drain; swimmers prepare for a race; a man threatens to leap off a bridge if authorities don’t redress his grievance.

Another theme is out-of-place people and animals: an addled man wanders in traffic, pigs escape a truck on a highway, an alligator turns up in a vacant lot and cops find anteaters in a raid on an illegal vendor. Though Huang cuts among these events with no apparent plan, “Disorder” charms with its choice anomalies.

No MPAA rating. Running time: 58 minutes. In Mandarin, with English subtitles. Screening at 8 p.m. Friday at the Nightingale, 1084 N. Milwaukee. Introduced by Kevin B. Lee, vice president of programming and education for dGenerate Films.

Bill Stamets is a locally based free-lance writer and critic.