Michael Winterbottom has never been one for lateral story lines and explanatory voiceovers. But his latest film, a near future sci-fi love story called “Code 46,” is too ambiguous, too meandering to envelop us. It’s ambitious work but ultimately cold, distant and difficult to piece together. From his re-creation of Manchester’s Sex Pistols-fueled music scene (“24 Hour Party People”) to his journey with Afghan refugees (“In This World”), his Bosnian war film (“Welcome to Sarajevo”) and his Western (“The Claim”), Winterbottom has thrown us into uncomfortable and jarring circumstances without much guidance, and is masterful at helping us to muddle through.
The world of “Code 46,” however, is flat, and I was less interested in finding my way through Winterbottom’s maze than just getting out of it.
Here’s what I think I understood: In Winterbottom’s imagined world, cloning has become so commonplace that a law, Code 46, governs citizens’ reproductive rights. Under this law, human beings who share the same nuclear gene set are deemed genetically identical. Embryo splitting and cloning make it possible for accidental or deliberate incestuous reproduction, so potential parents are screened for genetic similarities. Pregnancies are aborted and wiped from the mother’s memory if Code 46 violations are detected, and arrests are made if these violations were intentional. Phew.
There’s more: Winterbottom’s future world is not just a potential inbreeding disaster, but also a severely overcrowded one. To solve the population problem are difficult-to-come-by papelles, a sort of travel insurance, passport and visa all rolled into one. No one is permitted into cities without the proper papelle. Those without them are forced to live outside of controlled urban environments, which in Winterbottom’s ozone-depleted world means in the harsh desert, called al fuera.
Shooting on location in Shanghai, Dubai and Jaipur, production designer Mark Tildesley and cinematographers Alwin Kuchler and Marcel Zyskind set the tone of the film with a gray, stark aesthetic, where everything looks washed out and sapped of its natural beauty.
As the best science-fiction writers and filmmakers do, Winterbottom extrapolates on current realities–global warming, international travel restrictions, stem-cell research—-making his vision all the more eerie.
But then he gives us William and Maria, two unlikable characters written into a contrived love affair. Classic as the romance is–William (Tim Robbins) is a Seattle-based investigator in Shanghai on a papelle forgery case and Maria (Samantha Morton) is the forger–it never feels real and is bogged down by Winterbottom’s complicated imaginary world.
Because there’s more: William has taken something called an empathy virus–a pill or injection that allows him to read people’s minds, making his job quite easy. He immediately knows, then, that Maria is the guilty party, but because he has fallen in love with her over the course of a five-minute interview, he fingers someone else.
The tension that should arise when a company man like William lies and falls for a criminal in this highly policed society never does. Maria is honest with William about her insurance fraud–she even makes a papelle transaction in front of him, giving cover to her friend Damien. And William, a practical, measured, married man, tosses all logic aside for love. Typical and boring.
I cannot think of a role less suited for Robbins. From the no-good, dog-kicking cop in Robert Altman’s “Short Cuts” to his Oscar-winning turn in last year’s “Mystic River,” he is always a presence on screen, often with swagger, always with emotional intensity. Here, though, he is just a body in Winterbottom’s story and we’re never let in on William’s motivations or desires. It’s as if the futuristic plot rendered Robbins robotic; no matter what the year, a love story must have honest emotion and its lovers unfulfilled needs.
Morton tries to give Maria dimension, and is splendid as she speaks seamlessly in the near future’s language: a hybrid of English, Spanish, French and Arabic. But Winterbottom treats Maria as someone to be observed, not known. So we’re presented with these pointless, lingering close-ups and Maria becomes just a face–a wide-eyed, round, mysterious piece of art we’re not supposed to touch.
The couple encounters a series of obstacles–William is only covered to stay in Shanghai for 24 hours, Code 46 rears its head, Maria gets a virus–so the film only succeeds if we desperately want these intended-to-be-tortured souls together. But after a whole lot of implausible passion, I couldn’t have wanted them farther apart.
Winterbottom asks a lot of us. We must care about William and Maria. We must understand at least the basic rules of this near-future society. And we must follow the important plot points, because in this one, there really is a defined sequence of events. I was hazy on all of the above, which leaves “Code 46” a passionate and inventive director’s frustrating and confusing film.
And the future? Doesn’t look like much fun at all.
`Code 46′
(star)(star)
Directed by Michael Winterbottom; written by Frank Cottrell Boyce; photographed by Alwin Kuchler and Marcel Zyskind; production designed by Mark Tildesley; edited by Peter Christelis; music by The Free Association; produced by Andrew Eaton. A United Artists release; opens Friday. Running time: 1:33. MPAA rating: R (a scene of sexuality, including brief graphic nudity).
William ……………. Tim Robbins
Maria ……………… Samantha Morton
