The key moment in The Wackness is a punishing postcoital rejection for our drug-dealing adolescent hero Luke Shapiro (Josh Peck). Until then, this stylish Manhattan period drama (yes, 1994 is period now), set on the edge of Giuliani’s first New York clean-up, has been following hangdog Luke as he drifts about the city with a fake ice-cream cart stuffed with marijuana, listening obsessively to hip-hop and dealing to quirky locals, including his own off-kilter shrink, Dr Squires (Ben Kingsley, gamely chewing scenery).

Luke is depressed, and emotionally withdrawn. “I’m just not feeling all this feeling shit lately,” he tells Squires in an early therapy session. A chance encounter with Squires’s sassy stepdaughter Stephanie (Olivia Thirlby), and a burgeoning romance is just what Luke needs to ease his angst and restore his faith in childhood sureties such as happiness and love.

There’s something heartbreaking about Luke (a deftly internalised turn from Peck), nervously rehearsing the words “I love you” after losing his virginity to Stephanie. When he eventually spits it out, tentatively, but with a certain mock bravado, her cruel put-down lets you know that the movie, like all the best coming-of-agers, is about embracing the painful cynicism of adulthood, and occasionally finding beauty in that pain.

Its writer-director, Jonathan Levine, lavishes the movie with inky black shadows and soft gauzy close-ups, making it mostly feel like a dream, or a half-conjured memory. Which, given that the story, according to Levine, is quasi-autobiographical, seems entirely appropriate.

15, 99 minutes

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