THE TITLE OF Mike Figgis' new film, Time Code, describes not the story but the experiment. It's a brazen statement of formal significance; before you learn anything about the film's content, you learn the mechanical trick that made it possible.

Here's the pitch: The screen is cut into quadrants. Four films on one screen. Four digital video cameras recording each film in a single, continuous take. No editing. Story takes place in Hollywood -- is about Hollywood. No script. Actors are given characters and general plot points they have to hit by certain times. Cast wears synchronized digital watches.

Despite the built-in technical intrigue of such a contrivance -- the filmmakers clearly want to stoke a Blair Witch-style wildfire of chitchat about Time Code's formal approach -- Mike Figgis emerges as the right man for the innovation. His experiment is founded on a formidable story, a fact that might be lost in conversations about the film's format.

The four films unfolding simultaneously onscreen are all facets of one large narrative. Figgis tips the audience to the importance of a scene by its volume level, a kind of editing-by-suggestion that allows the viewer to accept or resist his path. He's provided an excess of material (93 minutes of film x 4), which allows you an excess of perspectives. You are the omniscient observer, and therefore the editor; you can play hooky from the dominant scene, dip into the other material, or spy on the lesser scenes. Rather than overwhelming the viewer, Figgis' careful tone control imbues Time Code with fluidity and ease. It's like walking down the street and choosing who to watch and which conversations to eavesdrop on.

Time Code takes place on Sunset Boulevard, among the glittery haze of the almost famous, married-to-famous, and very famous. It's the perfect subject matter for this multiple film, since fame is the proliferation of the self. Time Code the technique and Time Code the narrative are both about degrees of connection -- and no place else on Earth is more about connections than Hollywood.

Given the setting and the flashiness of format, it stands to reason that Figgis would inject a degree of self-reflexivity (which he does), allowing himself to have it both ways: He can be bold and self-effacing at the same time. In one quadrant, ambitious and slightly famous Ana Pauls (Mia Maestro) arrives at a production house to pitch a film with the very same formal arrangement as Time Code. "The time for digital video is now," she pronounces, before describing a "quadruple-split-screen": "it's quadraphonic," "four single shots," in "real time," etc. The head executive at Red Mullet Productions (Figgis' real-world company) candidly tells Pauls that her pitch is the most pretentious crap he's ever heard; he then assures her that he will produce it.

Although Figgis works with well-worn L.A. archetypes -- producers, executive producers, directors, actors, hiphop artists, models -- he finesses the beauty of mundane humanity from their glamorous husks, oscillating effectively between parody and delicacy. Lauren Hathaway (Jeanne Tripplehorn) is an extremely wealthy woman, but the intrigue of her wealth falls away in the light of her futile obsession with a cheating girlfriend. When unknown Rose (Salma Hayek) is "discovered" in a Hollywood bathroom and lands a lead role in three minutes -- the Hollywood Dream -- the whole scene feels dull, ordinary, and silly next to the more poignant moment of when she's caught cheating.

Being able to watch four screens at once, to be in four places at once, doesn't feel revolutionary; it feels natural. We talk about such things on a regular basis: being pulled in all directions, needing to be everywhere at once, wishing to be several people at the same time. But Time Code also occurs in real time, an unthinkably slow pace for a feature film. Figgis slows the story down to a greater truth, riding out all the bumps and snags of a real hour-and-a-half, multiplied by four. Thus, Time Code somehow conducts the chest-pulling charge of an action movie. We don't notice that the pace is awkward and antiquated, because we have the constant opportunity to lead another life elsewhere when distracted by the lag of any single moment. That's what movies are for.