Directors – Leela Varghese, Emma Hough Hobbs – 2025 – Australia – Cert. 15 – 87m
*****
A lesbian princess must travel through space to claim her inheritance and rescue her true love (who just dumped her) from straight white maliens – out in UK and Ireland cinemas on Friday, June 19th
NSFW
Princess Saira of Clitopolis (voice: Shabana Azeez) has been voted the Most Boring Royal ever – but then, her heart’s desire came along in the form of Kiki the Destroyer (voice: Bernie van Tiel) and changed all that. And then Kiki dumped her. Fuck!
Cue title song: “She’s a lesbian. She’s in space. And she’s also a princess.”
I was already won over by the silliness of the writing at this point. The animated visuals too demonstrate a unique, equally winsome style. Co-directors Varghese and Hobbs possess a real gift for humour, and have between them scripted the perfect comedy, in this critic’s opinion the hardest genre to pull off successfully. The narrative is punctuated by further, likeable indie songs which contribute to its appropriately alternate feel.
While Saira fails to summon the an ancient lesbian symbol of the labrys on her 23rd birthday, Kiki’s four in a bed sex games are disrupted by the arrival of the straight, while maliens the leader, Josh and Larry (voices: Melbourne comedy group Aunty Donna aka Mark Samual Bonanno, Broden Kelly, Zachery Luane) who suspend her over a vat of toxic home brew in the man cave where they find themselves exiled. They’ve tried to attract members of the opposite gender, but sadly Larry’s chick magnet has attracted the wrong sort of chicks, and the fresh eggs they provide every morning aren’t enough to compensate. So the maliens ordered a new model from Sweden, but it doesn’t include batteries. And the required batteries are Saira’s royal labrys. So the sw maliens give Saira an ultimatum of 24 hours to bring them the labrys.
Finding a problematic spaceship (voice: Richard Roxburgh from Elvis, Baz Luhrmann, 2022; Moulin Rouge!, Baz Luhrmann, 2001; Mission Impossible 2, John Woo, 2000) rather than an awesome one as she had hoped, Saira leaves the safety of the gay space bubble (voice: Max Garcia-Underwood), to the horror of the patriarchally-motivated ship which tells her girls can’t be pilots and wants to see the back of her as soon as possible.
Saira’s destination is the nightclub S-Galaxy 7, where she believes its drag queen owner Blade will be able to help her retrieve her labrys.
Attacked by an even more bigoted male ship, her own ship crash lands on a planet whose surface is littered with skeletons. Ignoring the space ship’s complete lack of encouragement, she goes out onto the surface, has a brief conversation with a tumbleweed (voice: Lori Bell) and falls down a hole. At the bottom of which, she finds a red crystal and a goth girl named Willow (voice: Gemma Chua-tran) singing a song about it.
Saira accidentally breaks the crystal, which produces a red river of liquid which stabs her leg just as she had spotted a way out (a ladder). The red goo feeds on Saira’s negative vibes (her new friend is relentlessly positive, and therefore safe from its appetite). Meanwhile, with 18 hours left, the maliens are explaining the finer points of a role-playing card game to Kiki, boring her out of her mind.
Back in the ship, Willow is won over by Saira’s magic tricks. The ship, meanwhile, asks what they think about the sex scene in Blue is the Warmest Colour (Abdellatif Kechiche, 2013). Once at S-Galaxy 7, Willow gives Saira a makeover to help her get past the VIP bouncers to get to club owner Blade (voice: Kween Kong), the one person able to help her summon her labrys, who sends her into her (black and white environment) subconscious where Saira must confront her own sense of failure, and parental rejection. All is going well until Saira returns from her subconscious, labrys in hand, only for the weaponry-fetishing Blade to seize the labrys from her. Willow turns up just in time to save the day – with a pineapple!!!
Meanwhile, with five hours left until to Kiki’s death, the maliens get into an argument about lesbians and thesbians, then move everything forward four hours in a fit of pique and contact Saira to let her know Kiki has only one hour left, in which videocall Kiki sees Saira with Willow. Then Saira’s new relationship goes horribly wrong, and Willow leaves to wait at the nearest bus stop. Now Saira must head for the most dangerous place in the universe – the home of the (unnamed) giant penis monster…
Which brings us neatly to that other sci-fi sex comedy of yore, Flesh Gordon (Howard Ziehm, 1974) which (among many other things) featured a penisaurus. Leaving aside the major production difference – that was a live action film with (remarkable) stop-fame animation special effects, where as this one is drawn animation – both films share a compellingly silly and frank approach to sex (Flesh Gordon is unashamedly heterosexual, Lesbian Space Princess is equally unashamedly lesbian) and an admiration for science fiction’s space opera subgenre.
Nothing like as explicit, but a definite precursor in terms of science fiction sex comedy, is Barbarella (Roger Vadim, 1968), a live action production based on a bande dessinée (French comic book). In terms of its visuals, Lesbian Space Princess feels a lot like Adventure Time (animated TV series, 2010-18) as well as deriving its aesthetic from numerous contemporary indie and internet comic strips.
Directors Varghese and Hough Hobbs are respectively an animation obsessive and a gifted humorist. The former is reponsible for the unique and arresting visual style, the latter for the superb voice casting of an impressive range of Australian comedic talent. And both are clearly committed to giving voice to a lesbian viewpoint. It’s to their credit that they manage to do so in such an accessible way that this particular straight white malien scribe (and closet science fiction fan) felt completely on board with the whole thing
With this most definitely being an independent production, it’s hard to imagine this duo being allowed to do what they do here in a more mainstream set-up (but, never say never, right?). On the evidence of this current outing, I feel Varghese and Hough Hobbs have many more stories to tell to tell in due course. For now, though, just sit back, enjoy and cherish this comedic animation gem.
Lesbian Space Princess is out in cinemas in the UK and Ireland on Friday, June 19th.
Trailer: