| Human
Traffic is an honest depiction of nineties club
culture set in Cardiff, Wales. First time Welsh director,
Justin Kerrigan, said (in a Filmink interview): It's
a film about me and my friends. It's about our sexual
insecurities and social paranoia.
It
is fresh, direct and original with no frilly bits.
A group of young friends from ordinary families, sick
of their boring daytime existence, live for the weekend
to escape via drugs, clubs and parties. The wild impulsive
spirit of youth seeks the drug of choice: ecstasy.
The club culture is the nineties alternative to teenage
rebellion.
There
are no stars in this film, no famous names to distract
from the scene. Human Traffic is an education. The
preliminaries, the build-up, the organisation for
the weekend; the actual drug-taking, the behaviour
under the influence, the alliances, the feelings;
the come down, the aftermath take viewers step by
step through the process. Jip, the central character
played by John Simm, describes as he is tripping:
Present
is gone. Fantasy is a part of reality. When we take
the brakes off we're thinking clearly, yet not thinking
at all. We stop trying to control things. Warm rush
of chemicals through us. We're fluctuating. Is this
brain damage? We forget all the pain and hurt in life.
We're not threatened by people anymore. All our insecurities
have evaporated. We're in the clouds now. Wide open.
We're spacemen, orbiting the earth. Yeah, the world
looks beautiful from here, man. We risk insanity for
moments of temporary enlightenment.
And
describes the paranoia when he has come down:
The
children of ecstasy aren't safe anymore. We're no
longer all together as one but separate mental patients
that yearn to be ejected out of this poisoned atmosphere
to a warm bed . . . Reality's on her way. Where am
I? What have I done? Was it worth it?
At
times I found the Welsh lingo and club jargon a little
hard to follow, but I do recommend parents catch this
young person's film, available on video. It is well-acted,
well-scripted, well-directed, highly entertaining,
authentic and very informative.
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