REVIEW BY SARAH STEPHEN
Code 46
Directed by Michael Winterbottom
Starring Samantha Morton and Tim Robbins
Opens nationally August 4
Code 46 is a love story, but it's not your usual love story. It has as a backdrop some fascinating and very contemporary issues. This future world is devastated by ozone depletion and environmental decay, and it's dangerous to live out in the open. The privileged live in the cities, to which entry is heavily controlled. The rest live in shanty towns in the wasteland that remains. Free movement is possible only if you have a papelle — special travel insurance.
Michael Winterbottom is a film-maker with a fascinating collection of films under his belt. His previous film, In This World, was the first of his that I'd seen. It was powerful and deeply moving — a documentary-style film about the journey of two Afghan boys from a refugee camp in Peshawar, Pakistan, with the aid of people smugglers, to Britain.
Winterbottom was working on the story of Code 46 before he made In This World, and the experience of making the latter film helped to shape many of the elements of Code 46. Winterbottom is quoted in the film's production notes as explaining: "One important thing was the frustration of passports, visas and all the bureaucracy that goes with travelling through a lot of countries — the problem of not having the right paperwork. That became part of the back story, the need for papelles, the road-blocks and security, and the difficulties of cross-border travel in general."
Maria, superbly played by Samantha Morton, helps people to subvert this rigid restriction on movement by selling fake papelles.
William (Tim Robbins) is sent to investigate who is obtaining these fake papelles, and he meets Maria. He knows it is her who was responsible, but there is an instant attraction between them, so he hides her crime and they embark on a passionate affair, but it lasts only as long as his papelle — 24 hours.
To call it science fiction is to give entirely the wrong impression about the sort of film that Code 46 is. It's futuristic, but doesn't rely at all on special effects and sets to produce this effect. Filming took place in Shanghai and Dubai, both visually powerful and strange places.
The fraught issue of human cloning is at the centre of the film, which explores an anticipation of what its emotional consequences might be. William discovers that his mother was cloned, and there are several genetically identical women in the world. He realises he knows one of them; in fact, he has fallen in love with her.
The film's title, Code 46, is the name of a law that's considered central to the functioning of this future social system. It states that people who are genetically similar cannot marry or have children, and the penalties for violating the law and harsh and tragic.
Maria and William violate Code 46, and the consequences of this form much of the film's story. It's a very moving and absorbing film, with beautiful cinematography — slightly surreal cityscapes alongside huge expanses of desert. I thoroughly recommend it as a beautiful, multi-layered film, with plenty of emotional and intellectual food for thought.
From Green Left Weekly, August 3, 2005.
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