Code 46

In the near future the world is divided between those who live "inside", in high-density cities, and the poor underclass who live "outside." Access to the cities is highly restricted and regulated through the use of health documents, known as "papeles" in the global pidgin language of the day (composed of elements of English, Spanish, French, Arabic, Italian, Farsi and Mandarin).

Most city residents venture outside only after dark since direct sunlight is now considered hazardous to their health (UV rays can cause melanoma). However, a few residents still venture outdoors during the day. The government appears to be authoritarian and dystopian.[1] Society is regulated by various "codes". The code of the film title prohibits "genetically incestuous reproduction", which may occur as a result of the various medical technologies which have become commonplace, such as cloning.

William Geld, an insurance fraud investigator, is sent to Shanghai to interview employees at a company known as "The Sphinx", which manufactures "covers", ostensibly "insurance cover documents" but which in fact regulates the movements of people among cities and "inside" and "outside". William's assignment is to identify employees who are suspected of forging "covers". After interviewing numerous Sphinx employees, he identifies a young worker named Maria Gonzalez as the forger. He is able to do this using a genetically engineered "empathy virus," which allows him to gain information from people if they voluntarily reveal something about themselves. Maria tells William that she has the same dream each birthday: she is traveling the subway to meet someone she cannot identify. Each birthday she is one station closer to her destination, where she expects to meet the person. William is captivated by her, and instead of turning her over to security, he identifies another employee as the forger.

William then meets up with Maria and they begin an affair. Putting complete trust in a man who could have had her arrested, Maria reveals how she was able to smuggle papeles out of her workplace. In a nightclub they meet Damian, a naturalist who longs to travel to Delhi to study bats. He has applied for cover for eight consecutive years but has always been refused. Maria supplies Damian with a papel. William is upset by this and indicates that he should turn Maria over to the authorities, but Maria knows he won't. William explains that there are legitimate reasons why Damian is unable to obtain the proper clearances legally. Maria believes that some risks are worth taking to fulfill one's dreams.

Back at her apartment, Maria shows William her "memory scrapbook" (an electronic booklet that records video from the user's mind), which contains memories of her parents and friends. Other movies show her passing papeles to various people. She thinks they are beautiful and their eyes are full of desire and dreams, and that they have a different look from "everyday" people. As Maria sleeps, William finds a forged cover in her room and takes it.

William's travel cover will expire the next day so he returns home to his family. On the way to the airport, he gives the forged cover to a street vendor at the city's perimeter checkpoint, an act of humanity which could change the vendor's life. Later, he learns that Damian died in Delhi after exposure to a virus to which he had no immunity. William is reprimanded for not discovering the true Sphinx forger. He explains that he had trouble with his empathy virus and requests that someone else be sent, as there may have been an accomplice to the innocent man he fingered as the guilty party. However, he is ordered to deal with the problem and to return to Shanghai.

Upon his return William discovers that Maria has gone. Her apartment is abandoned and the only clue is a medical clinic appointment. He visits the clinic and, using his empathic abilities, learns that Maria was pregnant and that the pregnancy was terminated due to a violation of Code 46. William knows that this means Maria is somehow genetically related to him, but he has no idea how.

William discovers that Maria has been taken to have her memory of the episode erased. He talks to Maria, but finds her memory of him is gone. He succeeds in getting the clinic to release Maria into his care by telling them she is a witness in his fraud investigation. After she is released, William proves to Maria that she knows him by his intimate knowledge of her and by showing her the memory recording of when she gave Damian the papel, which includes a shot of William. William tells her about the memory erasure and about how he didn't report her for fraud. Maria is disturbed by this information and becomes very distressed. William gives her a sleeping pill and, while she is sleeping, he cuts some hair from her head and takes it to a facility providing instant DNA analysis. There he discovers that Maria is fifty percent genetically related to him, a biological clone of his mother, who was one of a set of twenty-four in-vitro fertilised clones. This knowledge does not affect William's feelings, but instead of going back to Maria he decides to go home to his family. However, when he tries to leave he is not allowed to do so as his 24-hour cover is now expired.

William then realises that his only hope of returning home is to get a papel from Maria. He returns to her apartment and tells her about his inability to leave. She agrees to help him. She tells him she must acquire a papel and meet him at the airport later. She goes to work to obtain a papel, but is unable to forge one herself, as she was moved to another area of work, so a co-worker makes the cover for her. While taking a train to meet William she remembers her birthday dream, and that he was the person she is looking for in the dream. She recalls her feelings for him. She meets William, gives him the papel and tells him so. He decides not to leave her.

William and Maria then travel to Jebel Ali in the Middle East, which does not require special travel clearance. The two hide out in the old city where they book a room. Here William reveals to Maria that, in addition to the memory wiping, she has been given a virus that induces a terrorising adrenaline rush in response to physical contact with the person who brought about the Code 46 violation. However, Maria still wants to make love with William, so he ties her down to prevent her from fleeing once the adrenaline rush kicks in.

Afterward Maria enters a somnambulistic state, also caused by the virus, which forces her to report the further Code 46 violation to the authorities. She is unconscious of this, though William is aware of the virus's reaction. They then rent an old car and travel away to escape the authorities who are tracking them. William crashes the car while avoiding a collision with camels and pedestrians and they are both knocked unconscious.

When William awakes in the hospital he finds himself in Seattle with his wife and child. He has no memory of Maria or the Code 46 violation, as all memories of her and their time together have been completely flushed from his mind and replaced with memories of a successful investigation. The authorities had brought William before a tribunal, but decided the empathy virus had affected his judgment. He attempts to use the empathy virus to read his son's thoughts on the drive back from the hospital, but is unable to because the virus was permanently removed, and antibodies implanted to render reinfection impossible. Maria is more severely punished, in effect, by not having her memories of William loving her erased (instead being altered to make them stronger), essentially forced to remember him and exiled to the place she hated the most, the desert, outside of "cover". Her final words of the film (portrayed through voiceover of the end-of-film events and a montage of her poor, "beggar" life and existence) are, "I miss you."

• List of films featuring surveillance

• Official website
• Code 46 at IMDb
• Code 46 at Rotten Tomatoes
• Code 46 at Box Office Mojo
• Radio interview about Code 46 with Michael Winterbottom, first broadcast on Resonance FM
• The future is now: Sci-fic in real locations