A trio of hipsters and hairstyles (Leisure Time Features)

Hipsters is an exuberant splash of color in contemporary Russian cinema that immortalizes a 1950s underground youth movement in a playful musical format. On the heels of the repressive Stalin regime, a small, fearless group of teenagers embraced a fusion of American swing-era and rock-’n-roll culture by piecing together whatever clothes, music, and lingo made it from behind the iron curtain. Procuring their eye-popping threads—at least according to this exaggerated Technicolor fantasy—from black-market tailors and their records from illicit bazaars, these stylish rebels were ripe for taunts, harassment, and arrest from their conforming comrades.

As a Communist Youth deputy, Mels (Anton Shagin) jostles with the hipsters during a routine raid on their swinging dance party in a Moscow park. But when Polly (Oksana Akinshina), the most beautiful of the brightly dressed bunch, catches his eye, Mels doesn’t take long to trade in his bleak commie garb for a lime green suit and a towering pompadour. A few dance lessons later, Mels (named after Marx-Engels-Lenin-Stalin) drops the “s” from his name and closes ranks with the bemused gang, in hot pursuit of his leading lady.

The narrative twists are reductive and amusing at best, with the brunt of the film’s entertainment shouldered by its energy and musical numbers. The choreographed dance sequences, stylized in the way of music videos or a life-affirming commercial, are set to a medley of jazz and iconic Russian rock, rerecorded in the cool-cat, swing-era style. Most of these musical interludes make for some toe-tapping fun, but only one truly stands out: an eerie chant in an auditorium of communist youths-cum-zombies, whose menacing notes leave the film’s most lingering impression.

This caricatured fantasy, with its predictable plot twists and some shaky performances (namely Shagin’s), wouldn’t go far if it wasn’t replete with social commentary and based on a fascinating moment in Russian history, when much less than dancing or bright clothes could get you arrested. And it is in this, and only this, context that the freewheeling celebration of the hipsters’ unique brand of nonconformity makes for a joyful and satisfying release.