It may be set in 1819 but, insists Danish director Morten Henriksen, The Magnetist's Fifth Winter - about a charismatic hypnotist who seduces a small Swedish town - is actually a very modern story.

Five seems to be the number that covers it. Five years was how long it took Danish writer/director Morten Henriksen to find the right way to adapt Per Olov Enquist's 1964 novel, appropriately entitled The Magnetist's Fifth Winter. But it was five years earlier than that, while making a prize-winning documentary for Danish television called The Hidden Reality, that Henriksen first became fascinated with what lies behind Enquist's novel: the world of alternative medicine, with its strange mixture of therapeutic skills, sexual power-play and showmanship, combining the undeniably effective, the irresistibly seductive and the obviously fake.

Indeed, it is a measure of the complexity of the subject matter that the research done for The Magnetist by Henriksen and his producer, Lise Lense-Møller, involved a weekend workshop with British TV personality Paul McKenna, who makes use of his very real skills as a hypnotist to produce a popular, gimmick-filled TV show.

Rolf Lassgard and Johanna Sälström as Dr. Selander and his daughter, Maria.

Not that there are any gimmicks in Enquist's novel: like the movie Henriksen has adapted from it, it is, at first sight, a period piece, set in a tiny, frozen town in northern Sweden a couple of decades into the 19th century. It was a time when the discoveries of the original 'magnetist', Franz Mesmer - the man who first popularised the techniques of hypnotism - were taking medicine into new areas which directly anticipated Freud's sexual theories. Mesmer - like Freud - fascinated the populace at large. But he horrified the medical establishment. And the medical establishment responded in the way in which the forces of tradition always do: by attempting to stifle change, and by whipping up public superstition against the newcomer. Which is pretty much what happens in The Magnetist's Fifth Winter.

The title character, a charismatic individual called Friedrich Meisner (played by Danish actor Ole Lemmeke, who won several awards, including a Robert - the Danish Oscar - for his role in Henriksen's 1992 feature debut, The Naked Trees), comes across the mountains from Norway to a small Swedish town, bringing with him a combination of medical magic and sexual charisma. The respected Dr Selander (Rolf Lassgård, one of Sweden's best-known actors) shows a scientific interest in Meisner's skills, and agrees to let the magnetist attempt to heal his beautiful blind daughter, Maria (Johanna Sällström, a top Swedish TV star just beginning to make her mark in the movies).

Selander's colleague, Dr Stenius (Gard B Eidsvold), Maria's intended, is furious, motivated both by professional mistrust (he is convinced that Meisner is a quack) and personal jealousy.