With his new film \Code 46,"" maverick director Michael Winterbottom proves that he not only shuns the idea of working in the same genre twice; he flat-out refuses to take his audience to the same place again.
Winterbottom's previous outings have, respectively, involved traveling Afghan refugees (""In This World""), the punk music scene in Manchester (""24 Hour Party People""), 1849 America (""The Claim"") and everyday London life (""Wonderland""). ""Code 46"" is a neo-noirish love story set in a dystopian future where cloning and other genetic experiments have become so widespread that the government's titular Code 46 regulates sex and pregnancies as to prevent incestuous births (apparently country music isn't the culprit after all).
Citizens are sharply divided into haves and have-nots: the haves have ""papelles"" and are permitted to work and travel in the ultra-globalized cities of the world, and the have-nots are doomed to wander the arid desert environment outside of the cities like nomads. A clairvoyant fraud investigator (Tim Robbins) is sent to Shanghai to locate a worker with a counterfeit papelle, and immediately discovers that the imposter is beguiling free spirit Maria (Samantha Morton). They embark upon a fitfully passionate love affair, and Robbins is conflicted between his job and his heart. And memory erasures, mind readings and frequent violations of Code 46 (i.e. illicit sex) ensue.
It is regrettable that this film, which contains astute ruminations on human nature and globalization a-plenty, turns out to be a near-miss. Despite the sincere intentions of Winterbottom and his suitably understated cast (Robbins and Morton tread that fine line between bland and reserved), ""Code 46"" struggles to balance its weighty ideas with its improbable but sporadically compelling central romance (and the inevitable period of lovers' rebellion) is too briefly depicted. For nearly an hour, Winterbottom's plentiful style and sleek, polished visuals triumph over choppy editing and occasional narrative incoherence; but the poorly realized climax and abrupt ending ultimately sink the film as a whole.
At first glance, ""Code 46"" appears to be a complete original, but it is essentially what would result from throwing ""Gattaca,"" ""1984,"" ""Solaris"" and ""Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind"" into a blender and hitting puree. Winterbottom's film is too uneven and pretentious to warrant favorable comparison to ""Eternal Sunshine,"" but too compelling and adeptly conceived to be lumped into the same damnable group as Soderbergh's spectacular misfire ""Solaris."" While ""Code 46"" is a sci-fi oddity that slightly misses the mark, it is the distinguishable work of an atypical, nonconforming auteur.
