Timecode

Director Mike Figgis’ experimental film records 93 minutes in the lives of various characters in and around a small-time Hollywood production company: an alcoholic producer (Stellan Skarsgard), his estranged wife (Saffron Burrows), an actress (Salma Hayek), her lover (Jeanne Tripplehorn) and various others (Holly Hunter, Kyle MacLachlan, Julian Sands, Steven Weber, etc.). Figgis divides the screen into four pictures, and each one follows a different line of action in one uninterrupted take, with occasional overlapping from one screen to another. The entire film was shot in one day, with the actors improvising their lines within an established outline. It’s not as confusing as it may sound—Figgis cranks up the sound here and there to draw focus—but the experiment is more interesting than the story.