Code Blue (2011)

Directed by: Urszula Antoniak | 90 minutes | drama | Actors: Bien de Moor, Lars Eidinger, Annemarie Prins, Sophie van Winden, Christine Bijvanck, Hans Kesting, Ria van der Bor, Yvonne Bos, Pieter ten Hove, Mark van Iperen, Inge Laan, Arrien van Prooijen, Henk van der Hoef, Uli Schickentanz, Gelijn Molier, Frieda Pittoors, Barbara Duijfjes, Pier van Brakel, Renee Fokker, Hanna van Lunteren, Fransje Boelen, Ian Bok, Juda Goslinga, Hanna van Vliet, Sijtze van der Meer, Esbjorn Mildh, Dennis Albrethsen, Lone Rosenquist

Nurse Marian is fascinated by death. She collects personal belongings from deceased patients (a comb; a pencil) and imitates their body position on the bed at home. During the clinically lonely night shifts at the hospital you see her almost waiting for death; not her own in the first place. Marian gives the last push when no one is watching.

Urszula Antoniak (“Nothing Personal”) uses a macabre premise to achieve a clear goal: the characterization of a woman who feels because of death; whose emotional life is dependent on the bodily destruction of others. At home she is alone and watches TV with the lights off; if something bad happens in the street, she will continue to stare passively from behind the window; she doesn’t tolerate mistakes—not her own, not even a supermarket cashier.

It goes without saying that ‘Code Blue’ is a film of few words. A relatively short film too, in which Antoniak makes her point quickly. Loneliness drives a middle-aged woman who has seen life pass herself by to the loneliest of all: the dying. The inability to connect with others and a perverted love experience are literally a deadly cocktail.

Ethical questions impose themselves on the viewer; the Dutch will undoubtedly think of the lawsuit against Lucia de Berk, but Antoniak nevertheless manages to interest her audience in the personal life of her angel of death; however, Marian’s victims remain nameless in the night. A comb with hair in it, a gnawed pencil: without further context, the deceased owners also remain objects themselves.

‘Code Blue’ is a courageous project, original in its cinematic approach to its main subject, death: the images and music hit the mark, but Antoniak lets its message be obscured by clichés about alienation (a bare apartment at a height, long hospital corridors, shots from the back, a phone stalker, violent sex). Because Marian – although played intensely by the Flemish Bien de Moor – does not become a unique film character as the film progresses, ‘Code Blue’ especially hurts.