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Matt Glasby

This is the latest instalment in an ongoing feature series reflecting on instances of East Meets West in world cinema, including cases of China-US co-productions.
British film director Michael Winterbottom mixes fact and fiction so expertly it’s hard to tell where one ends and the other begins.
His refugee drama In this World (2002) made great use of non-professional actors; the controversial 9 Songs (2004) featured non-simulated sex scenes; and the intimate Everyday (2012) was shot over a five-year period so the characters aged in front of our eyes.
“I prefer to take actors and put them in real settings and real locations and real situations rather than create artificial locations that serve the characters,” he told IndieWire.


The technique works especially well in the 2003 film Code 46, a moody sci-fi-romance starring Tim Robbins and Samantha Morton as forbidden lovers in a near future where biotechnology can change how people think and feel.
The film was shot on location in Shanghai, Dubai, Hong Kong and Rajasthan, with interiors in London.
“A lot of the aspects of the world of the film are amalgams of things that already exist,” said Winterbottom. “It wasn’t about creating or inventing anything, it was just, ‘This bit is interesting,’ ‘That bit is interesting,’ and putting them together.
“Shanghai is the main city, but we put the desert of Dubai around the outside of it.”
The contrast between “inside” (the city) and “outside” (the desert), legal and illegal, expat and immigrant is at the heart of the story.
Frank Cottrell Boyce’s script updates and assimilates aspects of 1984, Blade Runner, Brazil and other films to fashion something original. In this not-so-brave new world, travel is heavily restricted, requiring the use of health documents called “papeles” (Spanish for “papers”).

On the trail of a forger, insurance fraud investigator William Geld (Tim Robbins) is sent to The Sphinx, a company in Shanghai which manufactures papeles. Here he meets and falls in love with Maria Gonzalez (Samantha Morton), who knows more than she is letting on.
As ever with Winterbottom’s films, it’s not what happens but how. On the face of it, William and Maria’s Lost in Translation-style romance doesn’t seem especially remarkable. But as we watch them wander the city together, there’s something about the authenticity of the backdrop that adds an intensity to their emerging feelings.
Instead of conventional establishing shots, we have Shanghai’s ever-present neon flickering around them. Instead of extras, there are the endless, faceless crowds. It’s a cinematic language that approximates how we really see things – or perhaps how we remember them.
Shooting on the fly – without sets or, presumably, permits – allows Winterbottom to go wherever he wants. So we get scenes shot on the subway, in road tunnels and at airports – not the sort of thing you’d normally find in a low-budget indie.

Just as the characters break the rules by falling in love – William is married, and the pair share a genetic connection (the Code 46 violation of the title) – wandering off the tourist path lets us experience the disorienting allure of a new city.
This dreamy feel is helped by Alwin Kuchler and Marcel Zyskind’s gorgeous cinematography, which brings to mind the work of Wong Kar-wai, and a swelling post-rock soundtrack by Free Association (actually composers David Holmes and Stephen Hilton).
Despite all the rules and restrictions, Code 46 is a film about the human capacity to absorb and adapt. Maria, we learn, used to live outside and she wants other people to be able to share her freedom of movement.
The characters speak a kind of pidgin English, with words and phrases taken from French (“avion”/airplane), Spanish (“cerveza”/beer) and Mandarin (“ni hao”/hello), among others.

Recognisable landscapes drift into one another, like the Dubai sands encroaching on the outskirts of Shanghai.
At one point William and Maria spontaneously sing Bob Marley’s “No Woman, No Cry” together. It’s out of tune, out of time and, perhaps, an act of appropriation, but there’s something in the ways their voices entwine that makes it oddly beautiful – and new.
To try to escape their fate, they go on the run together from Jebel Ali in the United Arab Emirates, a city offering unrestricted access. But, of course, it can’t last. When they are caught by the authorities, William has his memory wiped, and is sent back home to his wife and son in England.
Maria stays in the outside and, it is implied, learns to assimilate once more. What we’re left with is a powerful sense of how being somewhere else can make you someone else, if only for a while.
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Samantha Morton and Tim Robbins in a still from Code 46.

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Samantha Morton (left) and Tim Robbins in a still from Code 46.

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Tim Robbins and Samantha Morton act out a Lost In Translation-style romance in a Shanghai director Michael Winterbottom rings with desert


Starring Samantha Morton and Tim Robbins as forbidden lovers in a story with echoes of 1984 and Blade Runner, Code 46 was shot largely in Shanghai and Dubai, the real locations lending it authenticity.


American cinema

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