Worth: $18.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Kristine Kujath Thorp, Eirik Sæther, Fanny Vaager, Anders Danielsen Lie
Intro:
… a confrontational comedy that consistently leads to crippling fits of laughter.
Satire often runs into the problem of making statements in jest that fail to be as ridiculous as those made with complete sincerity. And when dealing with satire specifically about social media influencers and the narcissistic traits therein, what with recent events like Colleen Ballinger finding a new low for YouTuber apologies earlier this year, a film would have to aim very high to get the point across without falling between the cracks of those who make a living out of talking out of their arses. Kristoffer Borgli’s Sick Of Myself takes aim and hits the bullseye.
Signe (Kristine Kujath Thorp) is a main character with Main Character Syndrome. From her introduction during a wine bottle heist, to her later face-scarring sympathy tactics, she scans every moment in social situations for opportunities to make it all about her. Thorp’s performance nimbly weaves into any gap in conversation, even if she must wedge one open herself, and Borgli’s scripting gives her perverse pearls to drop into each crevice of cringe. She reads as an even more extreme version of Kim from Kath & Kim, with her potent blend of extreme self-absorption and contrasting absence of self-awareness, to the point where this film easily could’ve been localised as ‘Lovin’ Myself Sick’.
The sense of humour on offer here is pitch-black, starting out with a woman being mauled by a dog and getting progressively uglier from there, and its comments on narcissism in the modern age are just as bleak. As overused as the phrase ‘victimhood’ has become from the mouths of bad faith actors, the Munchausenian portrait painted here gives a blistering example of that label in its worst-possible manifestation. A woman so starved for attention than she quite literally disables herself, just so she can compete with her boyfriend Thomas (Eirik Sæther), an artist who tests the limits of the Hitchcock quote “Good artists copy, great artists steal”.
While the statements made about attention-seeking behaviour and malignant narcissism are quite scathing, it’s actually the remarks about how the disabled are treated by ‘normal’ society that end up being even more damning. As Signe’s fabricated celebrity gets to the point where she seeks a career in modelling, she comes face-to-bandaged-face with the ‘inclusivity’ market, where all shapes and sizes are welcome to participate… so long as they still fit into a conventionally attractive package that doesn’t make the abled uncomfortable. It’s an addition that helps reaffirm the film’s stance, showing the despicable and perhaps pitiable actions of Signe while emphasising the harm that she’s doing and to whom specifically.
Sick Of Myself is a confrontational comedy that consistently leads to crippling fits of laughter. It is as upfront and obvious as the scars on Signe’s face, all of which create a roadmap leading to some incredibly harsh but justified jabs at the most disgusting varieties of narcissism, while showing much-appreciated solidarity with the disabled community as well. If Joachim Trier hadn’t already used the title, this could accurately have been named The Worst Person in The World.
