Three miles north of Molkom

IF YOU were setting out to make a drama about an annoying hippie commune in Scandinavia, what sort of character would you pick as the audience’s avatar? Well, presuming a degree of cynicism on the viewer’s part, you might dream up an unpretentious Australian rugby coach called Nick (or something). You would, of course, never encounter that sort of bloke at a genuine commune. That’s the movies for you.

Corinna Villari-McFarlane and Robert Cannan, the young directors of this very enjoyable documentary, cannot have believed their luck when they encountered the real Nick. Their film details the consistently absurd, often hilarious, sometimes disturbing events – fire-walking, tantric sex, psychic jousting – at a New Age retreat in the forests of Sweden.

The disbelieving, eye-rolling Aussie arrived there almost by accident and, until he eventually gains a partial accommodation with the attendees, his comments serve as acidic footnotes on the increasingly weird goings on. “If they’ve got these problems, just sit down and deal with it,” he says. “Don’t go around chanting about it. The United Nations don’t chant.” Well said, sir.

With Nick on hand to tut and snort, the film-makers are free to take a largely nonjudgmental attitude towards their subjects. Some are, it must be said, undeniably ridiculous.

Lusty Siddhartha, a Swedish harbourmaster, makes a mockery of his quasi-Buddhist name by glowering furiously at anybody who dares to question the event’s huggy, kissy ideology. A woman named Ljus takes the hippie aesthetic to new levels of feyness. And the whole event, attended largely by bourgeois vacationers, seems skewed towards the unthreatening end of the counterculture.

And yet. As events progress, even Nick comes to admit that one man's gibberish might be another bloke's enlightenment. Skilfully edited, featuring gorgeous sun-flared photography, Three Miles North of Molkommay allow us to laugh at our fellow man's folly, but it remains firmly on the side of tolerance.

As Nick would say: no worries, mate.