Sick Of Myself movie review (2023) | Little White Lies

Sick Of Myself

18 Apr 2023 / Released: 21 Apr 2023

Woman taking pills from an assortment of medication on a wooden table.
Woman taking pills from an assortment of medication on a wooden table.
3

Anticipation.

From the same kids who brought us The Worst Person in the World.

3

Enjoyment.

Pushes its own small envelope in lots of amusingly grotesque ways.

3

In Retrospect.

Taps into something unique about the degradation that comes with modern celebrity culture.

A com­pet­i­tive pair of self-obsessed nar­cis­sists will do just about any­thing for atten­tion in Kristof­fer Borgli’s satir­i­cal fea­ture debut.

There’s a very fun­ny and provoca­tive con­cept at the core of Kristof­fer Borgli’s none-more-black rela­tion­ship com­e­dy, Sick of Myself, and it’s the ques­tion of whether we can con­trol how our body reacts to extreme self-abuse. Signe (Kris­tine Kujath Thorp) is a charis­mat­ic layabout who is also a world cham­pi­on narcissist.

She is in a rela­tion­ship with Eirik Sæther’s on-the-rise artist, Thomas, and their romance is framed as an index of caus­tic microag­gres­sions and pet­ty rival­ries. Thomas’ fix­a­tion with a mag­a­zine cov­er shoot caus­es Signe to pur­chase some pills from the inter­net that she knows cause an adverse reac­tion in an attempt to cur­ry sym­pa­thy with him, as well as the fam­i­ly and peers who have under­stand­ably shunned her over the years.

The obvi­ous flaws in her char­ac­ter prompt her to rush the process, and the film becomes a ver­sion of, what if the Ele­phant Man want­ed to be the Ele­phant Man as a way to boost his social media met­rics? It offers a spite­ful­ly fun­ny take­down of a cul­ture which sees no dif­fer­ences between the acts of soul-bear­ing and self-abase­ment, and just when you think Bor­gli couldn’t twist the knife any fur­ther, he does just that.

In many ways, it could be clas­si­fied as a hor­ror movie and Sigme is the vic­tim that we pur­pose­ful­ly don’t empathise with as she suf­fers so bru­tal­ly, and that gam­bit works for and against the film when it comes to build­ing an emo­tion­al con­nec­tion with such hate­ful characters.

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