Code 46 movie review & film summary (2004)
The hero, played by Tim Robbins, has a name well suited to this con William Geld. He's on assignment to Shanghai to investigate Maria, a suspect in the papelle operation, but is thunderstruck by love the moment he sets eyes on her. This may be because romance in science fiction is more often a plot convenience than an emotional process. Or it may be because William has been injected with an "empathy virus" that allows him powerful intuitive powers. He investigates in the Dr. Phil style, by feeling your pain. He sees into souls. And in the case of Maria, to know, know, know her is to love, love, love her.
The viruses are an ingenious idea, one of many enriching the screenplay by Frank Cottrell Boyce, who undoubtedly contracted the empathy virus himself before writing "Hilary and Jackie," and whose intelligence and imagination are well-suited for collaboration with the restless, eclectic, never predictable Winterbottom. If you're familiar with the titles "Butterfly Kiss," "Welcome to Sarajevo," "The Claim" and "24 Hour Party People," ask yourself how these films, and "Code 46," could possibly have been created by the same two people. Their luncheon conversations must resemble a season of Charlie Rose.
Viruses, of course, carry information. That's what they do, and Richard Dawkins points out that from their point of view, they are the life form, and we are simply the carriers to get them from one generation to the next. Boyce indirectly but amusingly suggests how they work when Maria mentions she once tried a virus that allowed her to speak Mandarin: "Chinese people could understand what I was saying, but I couldn't." Why does that line make me think of Groucho Marx?
Maria and William engage in a daring forbidden romance and exchange information that's subversive under the new laws. Her crime was to help a friend get papelles in order to travel to India to study a rare breed of bats. India, apparently is not part of the DNA-protected zone, and indeed there are "freeports" throughout the world where the rules don't apply. That raises the question of why anybody would go to the trouble of living under these rules: It's like moving all the way to Singapore just in case you're ever seized with the need to chew gum or spit on the sidewalk. The love scenes between Maria and William are enlivened by his empathy virus, as you might imagine; I assume it makes him a rare male who knows and cares how his partner is feeling. Such science-fiction aids to romance have been insufficiently explored. If Lois Lane gets Clark Kent into the sack in the new Superman movie, I hope she shares with us about the Man of Steel.
