Mike Figgis' Time Code is a fascinating experiment.
He starts with a premise that has fuelled most of the films of Robert Altman and Lawrence Kasdan.
He takes several seemingly unrelated storylines and has them converge.
In the case of Time Code, the four stories unfold simultaneously.
Figgis has divided his screen into quadrants.
The action never stops in any of the quadrants, but sometimes they spill into each other.
By raising the volume in a particular space, Figgis lets the audience know where he wants them to focus at any given time, though the choice is certainly up to the individual.
It's difficult to avert one's gaze from a sex scene to listen to a group of annoying talking heads, even if Figgis cranks up the volume of the dialogue.
The first story centres on a wealthy lesbian (Jeanne Tripplehorn) and her young lover (Salma Hayek), who is an aspiring actress.
The starlet is having an affair with a womanizing producer (Stellan Skarsgard), whose company is holding auditions and meetings in his offices.
In a third quadrant, the producer's wife (Saffron Burrows) is conferring with her psychiatrist (Glenne Headley) about leaving her errant spouse.
The fourth quadrant chronicles the activity in the foyer of the studio offices.
The actors were given a skeleton script and asked to improvise their lines to reach certain goals. This results in some painful moments and some embarrassing performances.
Worse still are the poor extras, who resemble silent film actors mugging to make a point.
Of the principals, Skarsgard and Tripplehorn fare the best because they have created real characters and a consistency to their acting.
Julian Sands is hilarious as a masseuse who is trying to relieve the tension of the film executives as they conduct their conferences.
The stories are woefully melodramatic and the climax, which should have been powerful and unsettling, is comic.
Time Code is more intriguing for what it attempts than for its story and characters.
Undoubtedly, the actors and crew had a whale of a time, but the same is not true for the audience.
A documentary on the making of Time Code would be infinitely more compelling than Time Code itself.
(This film is rated AA)
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