Code 46 (2003)
Director: Michael Winterbottom
Cast: Tim Robbins, Samantha Morton, Om Puri
Genre: Drama, Romance, Sci-Fi
About: A futuristic society where some people are cloned, others born in vitro, while others are born naturally. Genetic screening prevents those with similar genomes from producing offspring. If they do, it's a Code 46 violation.
Review: I have nothing much good to say about this film...and I really wanted to like it. I heard it described as a futuristic
Brief Encounter (1945)... a forbidden love story in which a married man
(Tim Robbins) has an affair with a younger single woman (
Samantha Morton)...the couples romance is impossible due to their genetic similarities and the government intervenes.
Sounds good! but it ain't. It was slow, and not in a good way. Tim Robbins was a bore with zero screen presences. He has such a lack of enthusiasm that I though he was sedated. It's hard to believe the young woman factory worker would be romantically interested in him. Though she wasn't exactly a catch either.
Samantha Morton wasn't as boring, but she and Robbins had no chemistry and as this is suppose to be a doomed love story, it didn't work. Some of their scenes seemed to be improvised and it was like watching two actors practice together. They were not in character in the bar scene. It looked like a practice shot.
Code 46 made me feel nothing....I wasn't happy, sad, outraged, amused, nothing. It didn't move me, or make me think anything
(except wondering how much longer until it was over)...I thought at the end there would be something that would make the 90 minutes worth while, but zip.
Oh but there's one shocking scene in an otherwise very benign, almost G rated movie...during a sex scene there's a very clear and close up shot of the privates of Samantha Morton (actually it look like a body double was used). It was better suited to an adult erotic film and I can only conclude the director had nothing else to offer but a peep show.