Cast: Saffron Burrows, Salma Hayek, Holly Hunter, Kyle MacLachlan, Mia Maestro, Leslie Mann, Alessandro Nivola, Julian Sands, Stellan Skarsgard, Jeanne Tripplehorn, Steven Weber
Director: Mike Figgis
Producers: Mike Figgis, Annie Stewart
Story: Mike Figgis
Cinematography: Tony Cucchiari, Mike Figgis, James Wharton O'Keefe, Patrick Alexander Stewart
Music: Anthony Marinelli
U.S. Distributor: Screen Gems
Time Code is a triumph of style and technological innovation, but a failure in terms of storytelling. In what amounts to an exercise that will find its primary audience in film school classrooms, the cinematic child of maverick director Mike Figgis (Leaving Las Vegas, The Loss of Sexual Innocence) uses three non-standard techniques. For Time Code, the screen is divided into four quadrants, each of which follows events in the lives of different characters (although there is occasionally an overlap as paths cross). All of these segments were digitally captured on video using a single camera in one uninterrupted, 90-minute take, with no edits or re-shoots. And there was no screenplay. Aside from certain "marks" that had to be achieved for the story to progress in the direction Figgis envisioned, everything was improvised by the actors. Put all of this together and you have a movie with an irresistible premise that results in a gimmicky and dissatisfying final product.
Time Code begins by gradually "opening up" each of the four quadrants. In the upper right, an emotionally distraught Emma (Saffron Burrows) is pouring out tales of her marital woes to her therapist (Glenne Headly). After enduring about a minute of this mindless chatter, we're ready to move on to another scene, and Figgis obliges by introducing a second group of characters in the upper left. They are a pair of lesbian lovers: Lauren (Jeanne Tripplehorn), an insanely jealous actress, and Rose (Selma Hayek), a wannabe starlet who professes faithfulness to Lauren before sneaking off to have a clandestine sexual encounter with Alex (Stellan Skarsgard), Emma's husband and the head of a motion picture studio. The lower right quadrant depicts a meeting of producers at the studio as they discuss potential projects. Finally, the lower left observes the casting process for Bitch From Louisiana, the latest project of a respected director.
One might think that simultaneously depicting four stories might lead to confusion, but Figgis avoids this by focusing our attention on a particular segment by turning up its sound while muting the audio of the others. It's possible to ignore the director's prompting and watch one of the other segments, but there's often nothing worthwhile taking place in the highlighted quadrant, let alone the others (unless you're fascinated by watching Jeanne Tripplehorn read a newspaper in the back seat of a limo).
The single camera/no cuts approach sounds more interesting than it actually is. Alfred Hitchock couldn't make it work in Rope, and Figgis proves that nothing has changed in 50 years to allow him to do better. (Although, by working on video, Figgis achieved legitimate 90 minute takes. Hitchcock, restricted to using 8-minute film reels, had to perform cinematic chicanery to attain the illusion of a single, unspliced take.) Dramatically, the approach is too constrictive. There's no variety in shots and the camera often misses important details. Plus, the project as a whole has an amateurish, home video look.
Another thing that Time Code does is make a compelling case in favor of screenwriters. This movie has none, and it shows - sometimes painfully. With the actors making up their own lines, we are subjected to a great deal of pointless, inane dialogue filled with awkward pauses and stutters. And there isn't a performance worth mentioning. A few of the more accomplished actors, like Stellan Skarsgard and Holly Hunter, hold their own, albeit barely. Others, like Jeanne Tripplehorn and Leslie Mann, are frighteningly bad (fortunately, most of their scenes are on "mute"). If Figgis was determined to use improvisation, he should have taken a cue from his fellow British director, Mike Leigh, who is also fond of the technique. However, Leigh believes in extensive rehearsal and pre-production work. As a result, his films are defined by a stark realism, while Time Code seems contrived from the beginning to the end.
The story comes across as a lampoon of Hollywood, a sort of lame echo of Robert Altman's The Player. The movie takes a number of half-hearted jabs at the movie-making establishment, showing pitches for unlikely films (like Time Toilet, a sci-fi/comedy about a time portal that exists in a toilet) and arguments about the kind of minutiae we imagine producers must argue about. There's even a filmmaker who's trying to fund a movie featuring "not one single cut...no editing...in real time. Imagine four cameras. Each of these four cameras will follow a character, and the characters will form the story." Sort of what Figgis was hoping would happen in Time Code. Only the characters never get past the two-dimensional stage, and the story, with its soap opera theatrics, fails to develop. So, while some of the technical aspects of Time Code are intriguing, there's little here for a movie-goer who is expecting to be challenged or entertained.
© 2000 James Berardinelli