The Cycle of Love review – a 6,000-mile bike ride caps a real life Swedish-Indian romance

Here is a story that on the face of it seems so wildly unlikely it can only be true. Indeed, the very concept of a romantic documentary sounds almost oxymoronic, an indication of how much nonfiction films have become synonymous with grim histories full of suffering and injustice. Let’s hope this sweet work, directed by Orlando von Einsiedel (who’s made his share of hardcore, suffering-intensive docs including Oscar-winning short The White Helmets) launches a new trend in nonfiction film-making for stuff that makes you happy-cry.

The basic meet-cute happened in 1975, when PK (played by Chirag Lobo in the film’s extensive re-enactments) met Lotta (Mina Dale) in Delhi. He was a poor street artist, a Dalit, the lowest possible caste, once called Untouchables. The real PK Mahanandia appears on screen to explain how he had left his rural village for Delhi in order to get away from all that caste hierarchy. When he met Lotta he pretty much knew he’d met the woman of his dreams because he’d been carrying a horoscope his father had commissioned for him when he was a baby that prophesised he’d fall in love with a woman whose family owned a jungle. Lotta, a backpacker from Sweden, hailed from a clan back home that owned a forest, so that was good enough for PK to believe he’d met his fate. After a chaste holiday romance bloomed between these two crazy kids, she went back to Sweden and he decided to bicycle the 6,000 miles all the way there from India to prove his love.

As we hear the now elderly young lovers describe what they were thinking at the time, we watch Lobo and Dale act out the journey, with poor PK getting into a few scrapes that set him back a few steps as he plods his way westward. Some of the most touching interludes are the interactions he has with strangers along the way that seem incredibly naturalistic and semi-improvised. Cynics might quibble that one can’t help wondering what darker parts of the story have been left out, and note that the actors chosen to play the lovers are a few notches more conventionally beautiful than the actual people – but every love story has its soft focus, flaw-concealing fudges so we’ll let it slide here.