Code 46

Colour, 35 mm
United Kingdom, 2003, 93 min
Section: Horizons

Synopsis

The near future. Shanghai detective William Geld has to find out which Sphinx insurance company employee is distributing false "papelles" - futuristic insurance ID protecting citizens in the overpopulated metropolis from the non-citizens kept outside. William finds out that Maria Gonzales is passing the forgeries, but he doesn´t do his duty because he ends up falling in love with her. After spending a night of passion together, he returns home to his family in Seattle. Then one of Maria´s clients dies while using a fake papelle and he has to return to Shanghai. He finds his beloved at a medical clinic. Like him she has violated Code 46. This futuristic variation, employing the Oedipal myth and film noir rolled into one, comes out of the possibilities and limitations which genetic engineering may force upon humanity in the near future.

About the director

Michael Winterbottom (b. 1961, Blackburn, United Kingdom) graduated in English from Oxford University and in film from Bristol University and London Polytechnic. He started out in television as an editor, documentarist (two documentaries on Ingmar Bergman, among others) and director (e.g. a segment of the series "Cracker" for BBC Family and the award-wining drama The Strangers). He debuted with the black lesbian comedy Butterfly Kiss (1994). Next came an adaptation of Thomas Hardy´s Jude the Obscure entitled Jude (1996); a war story set in occupied Bosnia, Welcome to Sarajevo (1997); the drama I Want You (1998); the generation gap movie Wonderland (1999); and another Hardy transfer, The Claim (2000). The pseudo-documentary 24 Hour Party People (2001) and the immigrant story In This World (2002) were presented at the Karlovy Vary IFF.