Time Code and Miss Julie
two films by Mike Figgis

Toby Marshall

With Time Code and Miss Julie, the rather prolific Mike Figgis has brought us not one but two new films. Time Code succeeds as both an experiment in form, and a wry, if not entirely novel Altman-esque attack on the moral and cultural values of Hollywood.

It opens with the screen divided into four sections. As the credits and visuals dance from one segment to another, a human figure appears in the top right-hand box. Emma (Saffron Burrows) is describing to an analyst her troubled relationship with her drunken partner Alex (Stellan Skarsgard), a Hollywood executive. Action then begins in another box. A smartly dressed Lauren (Jeanne Tripplehorn) approaches a jeep and lets down one of its tyres. She is followed by her lover, Rose (Salma Hayek), who, unable to use the jeep, joins Lauren in her chauffeur-driven limousine.

As they are driven across Los Angeles the other boxes jump into life, and we realise that we are being offered four views of different Hollywood residents. And a nasty, low-down, bunch they prove to be. In various measures they are vain, selfish, ignorant, manipulative and cynical. Time Code was filmed using four cameras which simultaneously track different actors as they improvise around a storyline that we are told at the end was loosely scripted. And it works remarkably well.

The four feature-length takes lock together perfectly, offering a rather unique cinematic experience. Figgis also succeeds in setting up, and hacking down, some great Hollywood caricatures. Watch out for the hilarious arthouse pseud who drops a radical Marxist film pitch to the backing of a white, Ali G style rapper, who informs us that 'Trotsky's in the house.' And there are also moments of intense drama, provided primarily by Jeanne Tripplehorn, who is, as ever, superb.

Having said this, you may wonder if the director is not rather like the characters he depicts. Alex's company, for example, is called Red Mullet, a name shared by Figgis' own company, and the pitch is for a film that sounds remarkably like the one which we are watching. All this is very knowing and self-referential, but is perhaps, like the characters, a little self-obsessed.

Tiffany Jenkins

Miss Julie is based on a Strindberg play that focuses on the bitter struggle between the classes and sexes.

The film depicts the interaction of Jean, a valet to the Count, and Julie, his unstable daughter. Both characters desperately want what they think the other can offer - Jean is a determined social climber who has long desired Miss Julie's status; Julie has lost her emotional identity and wildy seeks something more, having been left by her fianceé. The film conveys more than just pure pragmatism - it carries the emotional cache of those attractions, playing with the viewers' loyalty to the characters.

All of the action takes place in the kitchen of a Swedish count's home on midsummer night's eve. Figgis constructed a 360° one-room stage for the entire film. Two hand-held Super 16mm cameras wielded by the director and cinematographer captured all of the action in 15-minute takes, and the entire story was shot in sequence. This gives the film an intense closeness and helps to convey the movement of the power play between the three characters. The lack of noticable scenery forces you to focus on the characters and their words.

The film's scenes are full of dark contrasts - the over-fertile garden that is a slightly rancid damp green which attracts Julie, but from which Jean withdraws, as we see his stoic composure and her swooning desperation, then his aggression and her timidity. The power play between the two is effective, but brutal.