Code 46 is a Michael Winterbottom allegory about a near future world where human relationships are society are damned by the power of eugenics and the extensive use of in-vitro genetically-designed pregnancies.
Tim Robbins is William Geld, a Government official on a trip to Shanghai to investigate a case of document forgery in a government security plant. There, he finds worker Maria Gonzalez (Samantha Morton), to whom he feels immediately attracted despite his conviction that she is the forger. Their love story, however, is cursed from the beginning as, under Code 46, they must not enter in a relationship, get married or have a baby as they share at least 46% of their genetic code and are strongly family related.
The movie is an allegoric projection into the future of the technological, scientific and cultural trends and issues predominant in the modern world. Being so, Code 46 is set in a multi-ethnic, multi-racial, multi-cultural and multi-linguistic society. The characters in the movie use an hybrid English mixed with words from different languages, mostly Spanish, but also Italian, French, Mandarin, Arabic, and Basque among others, which work in the say way Spanglish does nowadays. Winterbottom's future is strictly compartmented and structured, with a controlled individual freedom, and limited freedom of movement between world areas unless you have "papelles" [= from the Spanish papeles, i.e. papers/documents), which are only granted depending on your health state and genetic disposition to certain maladies and weaknesses. A believable situation in which Private Health Insurance and Government are almost the same.
The premises of the film are brilliant, thought-provoking and original, although connected with themes already presented in Gattaca. The high-tech future world is perfectly drawn and showed, and uses a mix of Shanghai, Dubai and Kuala-Lumpur futuristic urban settings and architecture, which provide a very sleek urban, metallic imagery and a cold feeling. In contrast, the outcast areas are wilder, more rural and underdeveloped, but warmer from a human point of view; they were shot in the desert area near Dubai and in India. The music (with a cameo performance by Mick Jones singing "Should I stay or should I go?) is also great, and gives a great mood to the movie.
Despite the undeniable style and good premises of the movie, this gets washed out by a poor script that soon departs from the love story, which it is supposed to be the core of the movie. The leading characters are poorly drawn and explored, and the love story feels more like a lust story than anything else; moreover, Robbins and Morton don't have a great chemistry on camera either so the movie ends lacking emotion and the viewer ends the film thinking, where is the love? On the other hand, the outcast society and the outcasts are barely introduced, so it is difficult to understand the sort of world we are dealing with, as we are just presented with the developed part of it. In other words, while the future society feels like real future, the outcast society looks more like the underdeveloped rural areas of our modern world, not the underdeveloped areas of the future.
A thought-provoking film with sleek visuals and music that is wasted by a drafted script and mediocre performances.
Tim Robbins is William Geld, a Government official on a trip to Shanghai to investigate a case of document forgery in a government security plant. There, he finds worker Maria Gonzalez (Samantha Morton), to whom he feels immediately attracted despite his conviction that she is the forger. Their love story, however, is cursed from the beginning as, under Code 46, they must not enter in a relationship, get married or have a baby as they share at least 46% of their genetic code and are strongly family related.
The movie is an allegoric projection into the future of the technological, scientific and cultural trends and issues predominant in the modern world. Being so, Code 46 is set in a multi-ethnic, multi-racial, multi-cultural and multi-linguistic society. The characters in the movie use an hybrid English mixed with words from different languages, mostly Spanish, but also Italian, French, Mandarin, Arabic, and Basque among others, which work in the say way Spanglish does nowadays. Winterbottom's future is strictly compartmented and structured, with a controlled individual freedom, and limited freedom of movement between world areas unless you have "papelles" [= from the Spanish papeles, i.e. papers/documents), which are only granted depending on your health state and genetic disposition to certain maladies and weaknesses. A believable situation in which Private Health Insurance and Government are almost the same.
The premises of the film are brilliant, thought-provoking and original, although connected with themes already presented in Gattaca. The high-tech future world is perfectly drawn and showed, and uses a mix of Shanghai, Dubai and Kuala-Lumpur futuristic urban settings and architecture, which provide a very sleek urban, metallic imagery and a cold feeling. In contrast, the outcast areas are wilder, more rural and underdeveloped, but warmer from a human point of view; they were shot in the desert area near Dubai and in India. The music (with a cameo performance by Mick Jones singing "Should I stay or should I go?) is also great, and gives a great mood to the movie.
Despite the undeniable style and good premises of the movie, this gets washed out by a poor script that soon departs from the love story, which it is supposed to be the core of the movie. The leading characters are poorly drawn and explored, and the love story feels more like a lust story than anything else; moreover, Robbins and Morton don't have a great chemistry on camera either so the movie ends lacking emotion and the viewer ends the film thinking, where is the love? On the other hand, the outcast society and the outcasts are barely introduced, so it is difficult to understand the sort of world we are dealing with, as we are just presented with the developed part of it. In other words, while the future society feels like real future, the outcast society looks more like the underdeveloped rural areas of our modern world, not the underdeveloped areas of the future.
A thought-provoking film with sleek visuals and music that is wasted by a drafted script and mediocre performances.