Sick of Myself – first-look review

The course of true love nev­er did run smooth, and for lovers Signe (Kris­tine Kujath Thorp) and Thomas (Eirik Sæther) that old tru­ism couldn’t be more applic­a­ble to their tox­ic rela­tion­ship, built on a mutu­al appetite for mis­chief and sus­tained by the desire to always top the other’s hijinks.

Thomas is an artist who makes instal­la­tions using chairs that he steals from pub­lic spaces – Signe works at a cof­fee shop, and is bit­ter that her boyfriend nev­er gives her any cred­it for her involve­ment in his stunts. When he starts to receive more atten­tion for his art, Signe resolves to lev­el the play­ing field by inten­tion­al­ly con­tract­ing a rare skin dis­ease that puts her back in the spotlight.

Kristof­fer Borgli’s fea­ture debut zeroes in on the nar­cis­sis­tic val­ue set of cer­tain Mil­len­ni­als, more inter­est­ed in how they can attract likes and com­ments on social media than the moral­i­ty of how they go about it. It finds com­e­dy in Signe and Thomas’ self-cen­tred natures and the absurd lengths they will go to to be the more inter­est­ing par­ty in their relationship.

From steal­ing expen­sive wine from a restau­rant to fak­ing a life-threat­en­ing nut aller­gy at a din­ner par­ty, the film essen­tial­ly revolves around a series of awk­ward sit­u­a­tions the pro­tag­o­nists cre­ate for them­selves, and then the even­tu­al bod­i­ly revolt that occurs as Signe makes her­self ill in order to elic­it more attention.

The film isn’t with­out its moments – a cameo from Anders Danielsen Lie is a wel­come diver­sion and some light util­i­sa­tion of gore high­lights how unhinged Signe is will­ing to get. Unfor­tu­nate­ly the film has some strange ideas about the real­i­ty of liv­ing with a phys­i­cal dis­abil­i­ty – while many peo­ple who have skin con­di­tions or facial dif­fer­ences find them­selves ostracised and treat­ed poor­ly, Signe is imme­di­ate­ly offered a mod­el­ling con­tract for a spe­cial tal­ent agency.

Her inten­tion­al dis­fig­ure­ment ini­tial­ly results in pos­i­tive results, and it’s only when Signe con­tin­ues to push her luck that things start to unrav­el. But from the moment she starts to gam­ble with ille­gal Russ­ian nar­cotics, it’s clear that there’s only real­ly one way the sto­ry can go, and the film is dis­ap­point­ing­ly one-note from then onwards.

Sim­i­lar­ly, it’s extreme­ly dif­fi­cult to real­ly care about Signe and Thomas as they are such unre­pen­tant­ly unpleas­ant char­ac­ters. Their thin­ly-veiled con­tempt for each oth­er begs the ques­tion, why are they even dat­ing at all, or more­over, why should any­one care? The awful­ness might be the point here, but in Sick of Myself it appears so one-note there’s nev­er any threat of deep­er mean­er or com­men­tary on soci­etal beau­ty stan­dards and the vora­cious appetites of social media influencers.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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