Dance music (or Electronic music or EDM or whatever they're calling it today) has been a curious one for filmmakers. Maybe it’s the 'faceless' aspect of the acts and that, as Steve Coogan pointed out in 24 Hour Party People, it’s a genre that doesn't celebrate the artist (the creator) but the DJ (the medium). Maybe this is why Dance/Electronic/EDM projects have never been financed with the same enthusiasm as rock: no personality.
But this is changing. This year we've had two dance music movies - Mia Hansen-Love’s rambling downer Eden and Max Joseph’s spritely We Are Your Friends – and both try to find that sweet spot: a face, a DJ who creates his own music.
Zac Efron is Cole, an LA based spinner struggling to land the good gigs with wheeler dealer buddy Mason (Jonny Weston) doubling up as Cole's manager and blagging Cole onto bills at local clubs. On one of these nights Cole runs into James (Bentley), a cooler than thou DJ who promises to get him the big festivals, but only if Cole gets cracking on his own music and finding his signature sound. Cole is at first overcome with gratitude… and then guilt when he and James’ girlfriend Sophie (Ratajkowski) embark on an affair.
With a plot involving four best buddies knocking about (drug dealer Shiloz Fernandez and Alex Schaffer, the conscience of the gang, filling out the foursome) and with the sun, the beautiful bodies chilling by the pool (Max Joseph's camera certainly has a thing for Ratajkowski’s cleavage), …Friends moves like an episode of Entourage at times – that loose, easy-going nature. But when Efron gets side-tracked into a scam real estate gig, the story gets unexpectedly grittier; Jon Bernthal’s mean-spirited shark comes over all Boiler Room (pop culture overload here - he was in Wolf of Wall Street too) when selling homes out from under troubled single mothers. It’s a welcome detour.
Despite Efron giving us a breakdown why 128bpm is the sweet spot – a cute way to explain why Dance music moves your ass to the uninitiated and yet is a fresh take for the aficionados – We Are Your Friends doesn't get the crowd vibe, doesn't get in amongst the bouncing bodies (it does, as stated above, get in amongst Ratajkowski’s cleavage). It's all surface. It doesn't have the community, the spirit, that oneness of the dancefloor. It can feel like it was made by people who don't understand/care about the scene but made it anyway because kids are into it and it'll make money.
But the Efron/Bentley/Ratajkowski dynamic pulls things through, it isn't afraid to muddy things up a bit, and the tunes are banging. Fifteen years on, however, and Human Traffic, flaws and all, is still the best Dance music movie out there.