Code 46 by Michael Winterbottom

Integrating the genres sci-fi and film noir, Code 46 by Michael Winterbottom provides us

the opportunity to think about particular issues and concepts of psychoanalytic theory presented in

the film through the interplay of those two genres. The characteristics of these two genres and how

they are incorporated into the film, however, is not a per se concern of this paper; we will be

concerned with them so far as they provide any means easing the psychoanalytic reading of the film.

In this context, through an analysis of both the narrative and the narration, I will be tracing the film

on three different levels indispensable from one another. First, from various angles, I will try to

show that Code 46 is nothing but a dream and the second is that there is a mutual and simultaneous

formation of the dream and the psychoanalyst-analysand relationship, the latter implying a countertransference as well as a transference. Finally I will try to situate the spectator with respect to this

relationship in particular and to the film in general.

Raw raw raw your boat

Gently down the street

Merrily merrily merrily

Life is but the dream

1

Film, reality and dream

Through both its narrative and narration, the whole film reveals itself as Maria's dream;

not necessarily but most probably the last episode of her serial "birthday dreams". The film opens

with the scene of some deserted areas from above through William's eyes, which are strangers,

outsiders to the city, just like the spectator is to the film at first. So from the very beginning of the

film, we identify with William and this identification is amplified through the scenes where Maria

directly looks at the camera and talks as if the spectator is William (We never see him looking at us). 2

William is about to come to the city, Shanghai, where Maria Gonzales lives (or "just exist[s]" as the

William's driver says); that night she is about to have the last episode of her serial dreams. These

serial dreams in the same day (sameness articulated here through the significance of the day,

birthday, instead of being the same date) imply the gradual clarification of her dream thoughts within

the manifest content of the episodic narrative of those dreams. In this respect, the last episode is the

most "confident and distinct" of all that represents the ultimate dream-thoughts (Freud, 1976, pp.

447, 448). Thus, on the one hand, we have William (or the spectator by means of identification)

entering the city and step by step approaching Maria, and on the other hand Maria getting closer to

the last episode of her dreams through which she, in her words, "will discover [her own] fate".

Retrospectively, we already know that the "someone" she was looking for in her episodic dreams is

the man she is about to meet, that is William. Thus, the narrative of the film coincides with the last

episode of Maria's serial dreams, that is to say the man she is about to dream is about to meet her in

reality. In other words, the reality of the film narrative comes to be a dream which the spectator is to

watch.

Cover, Sphinx and the Quest for the phallus

From a plane on the air to the car crash at the end, the whole film is woven around the

idea of transportation; going in and out, arriving, leaving, being exiled or being allowed and so forth.

All the voiceovers by Maria Gonzales (they are the only ones) are superimposed on the scenes of

transportation only. This special but not very distinct emphasis on the idea of transportation ascribe

to all the 'going in & outs' and the means of transportation in the film a metaphoric meaning, that is

going inside to the psychic reality of Maria and the regression in her psychic world; the return of the

repressed. In other words, the film is structured on the castration complex

2

that is closely related to

the Oedipus complex; a relation in the Freudian sense

3

. Maria's castration complex, her pursuit of 3

the phallus, reveals itself in her manifest dream and tells us how to interpret same or similar

prominent elements in the whole film. The metro in her dream, in which she looks for the phallus, is

itself a phallic symbol due to its "phallic power to transport her to 'another place' (Doane, 1992, pp.

237) In this sense, the covers, which enable people to go from one city to another, come to be a

striking phallic symbol around which the whole narrative is woven. The apparent obsession with

cover and the emphasized distinction between fake and legitimate covers comes to be symbolizing

the quest for the phallus, the signifier that is supposed to bring the Oedipus complex into resolution.

The resolution of the Oedipus complex entails the acceptance of the symbolic order. Intrinsic to the

symbolic

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