‘THE CODE’ (Fantasia 2024) Brilliant meta mindfuckery.

Fantasia 2024 logoTHE CODE

The Code

When Celine begins filming a documentary about her failing relationship, her boyfriend, Jay, becomes suspicious that she may have an ulterior motive: to cancel him. In a paranoid attempt to seize authorship over the film, Jay sets up hidden cameras and tries to entrap Celine into problematic behavior he can record as insurance. As their secret surveillance escalates, they find themselves creating a movie full of absurd, erotic and highly performative scenes, with a wild cast of characters. But when another couple’s whirlwind marriage puts Jay and Celine’s dysfunctional dynamic into perspective, the two of them must use all the cinematic moments they’ve shared to try and save their love, in this high-concept relationship comedy that asks, “Who’s in control of the narrative?”

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What is reality in a world almost entirely curated to capture your goldfish-length attention span? Filmmaker Eugene Kotlyarenko challenges Fantasia 2024 audiences with his latest film, THE CODE.

In an attempt to rekindle their love life, a sexless couple goes on vacation during COVID-19 under the guise of making a documentary. They agree to utilize the surveillance cameras in the rental house, constantly recording one another, ramping up the suspicions of cheating. This weird experiment is unpredictable and meta as hell. 

TheCode_Still2Tucker Bennett & Sabrina Greco‘s editing is mesmerizing. Its fast-paced quittake style, mixed with TikTok reels, surveillance cam footage, and app scrolling, multiframe viewing is wild. It should come as no surprise to fans of Kotlyarenko. SPREE is a severely underseen film starring Joe Keery, and it kicks ass.

Peter Vack and Dasha Nekrasova hold nothing back. Their hypersexual chemistry is perfection for a narrative so off the wall. The absolute madness that we witness has a crazy payoff that you won’t see coming. Oh, and the credits are bonkers amazing. Don’t skip out.


Remaining screenings of THE CODE:

Sun August 04, 2024
3:00 PM
Fantasia 2024 posterFor all things Fantasia 2024, click here!

About Liz Whittemore

Liz grew up in northern Connecticut and was memorizing movie dialogue from Shirley Temple to A Nightmare on Elm Street at a very early age. She will watch just about any film all the way through (no matter how bad) just to prove a point. A loyal New Englander, a lover of Hollywood, and true inhabitant of The Big Apple.

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