My movie recommendation for December is Michael Winterbottom's 2003 film Code 46 starring Tim Robbins and Samantha Morton. I was suprised to find that, after asking around briefly, the majority of film fans I know personally have not seen or even heard of this movie.
Code 46 is set in a future where cloning procedures are so commonplace, that rules and regulations must be laid out and enforced to prevent any 'incestuous' relationships. Climate change has fiercely taken hold in the hinterlands. Sunlight has become harmful and people are forced to live and work during the nighttime hours.
Only citizens that meet the the strict IVF (
In-Vitro Fertilization) requirements are given "cover" or travel visas to live inside major cities. Anyone who does not pass these requirements is deemed a refugee and they are literally banished to the desert; not permitted to enter any urban areas.
These rules and regulations are known as Code 46*.
Tim Robbins plays a happily married fraud investigator sent to Shanghai to find a lonely cover forger played brilliantly by Samantha Morton. What I find most interesting about the entire film is that once the two characters begin a relationship, they soon discover that their love for each other is not only prohibited because of professional reasons, but BIOLOGICAL ones.
Completely shot on location in Shanghai, China and Dubai, UAE, Code 46 is a stunning, real-world take on the ultimate endgame in regards to human cloning. Can love exist between clones of the same human DNA? A truly powerful question...
Code 46 is a true head trip and is, in my opinion, the greatest sci-fi romance ever made.
I really don't want to give too much away, but the tension and brilliance in this movie come from the implications that the love story itself is an illegal breach of Code 46. This movie is fucking incredible.
Wksc.
