A warm nostalgic glow surrounds this likably daft and zeitgeisty one-crazy-night clubbing adventure from 1999. It’s a Cool Britannia time-capsule written and directed by Justin Kerrigan, starring John Simm, Shaun Parkes, Lorraine Pilkington, Nicola Reynolds and a cherubic young Danny Dyer making his movie debut. Dyer’s character ends up down the pub moodily swearing off drugs for ever – and if we wondered how that was going to turn out, we can flashforward to his performance this year in Nick Love’s Marching Powder, in which he does much the same thing.
Human Traffic revolves around a group of gurning mates: a classic 90s ensemble of mononymous characters – Jip, Koop, Lulu, Nina and Moff – individually introduced in freeze-frame voiceover in that distinctive 90s Britmovie style, as popularised by Danny Boyle’s Trainspotting and Guy Ritchie’s Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. But those films were from Mars and this one is from Venus. It’s a sweeter story of the loved-up. They struggle through terrible jobs in the week and prepare for a massive night out on a Friday involving landlines, smoking indoors, proto-Ali G characters, no smartphones, no social media and some cameos from Howard Marks, Carl Cox and Andrew Lincoln (in those days an icon for his role in TV’s This Life).
It’s a comedy, with some very funny stuff from Dyer when his character has drug-induced epiphanies about Star Wars. There’s a reference in the opening credits to demonstrations against the anti-rave Criminal Justice and Public Order Act of 1994, but these are otherwise remarkably apolitical characters, whose ideology consists in being cheerfully pro-drugs, pro-hedonism and pro-having a laugh. Yet a weird earnestness comes through so often; at the time, critics mocked this film’s fantasy scene in which the young people stand up to sing their alternative “national anthem” about how mixed up and alienated they feel: “We’re running out of new ideas … Who is the Queen?” Now, it feels like a striking and interestingly surreal moment.
I’d also forgotten that Jip’s mother is supposed to be a sex worker. In another type of film, that fact simply would not be allowed to pass without some terrible crisis, or some consequent tearful and cathartic bonding between mother and son. Jip is also supposed to be suffering from erectile dysfunction and he is secretly in love with Lorraine Pilkington’s Lulu, but none of that is supposed to be anything to do with his mum who is basically cheerful about everything. Human Traffic is a reminder of that interesting 90s moment when euphoria and uncomplicated fun had cultural cachet. Now we need a rerelease of that other one-crazy-night ensemble drug comedy from 1999, Doug Liman’s Go, starring the formidable Sarah Polley.
• Human Traffic is in UK cinemas from 16 July and on 4K UHD and Blu-ray from 21 July.
