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| Images courtesy of Utopia |
Norwegian writer-director Kristoffer Borgli’s feature debut
film Sick of Myself, now in release through Utopia and boutique
releasing label Vinegar Syndrome, is among the most thoroughly repulsive and deliberately
cringeworthy Scandinavian dark science-fiction horror comedies of the new millennia. If Todd Solondz, Quentin Dupieux and David
Cronenberg sired a deformed mutant, it might look and sound like this with equal
attention to highlighting hedonistic narcissism with underlines fine cut with a
scalpel.
A reaction to and a movie for our newfound blood binding to the digital social media verse that’s taken over ordinary human interaction, a vulgar rebuke of our own general fascination with disfigurement and a plainly relentlessly cruel visceral provocation, Sick of Myself is the obvious logical answer to the discomforting promise of David Fincher’s The Social Network which saw the platforms open new doors, perhaps not for the better.
A reaction to and a movie for our newfound blood binding to the digital social media verse that’s taken over ordinary human interaction, a vulgar rebuke of our own general fascination with disfigurement and a plainly relentlessly cruel visceral provocation, Sick of Myself is the obvious logical answer to the discomforting promise of David Fincher’s The Social Network which saw the platforms open new doors, perhaps not for the better.
Signe (Kristine Kujath Thorp) and Thomas (Eirik Sæther) are a young couple residing in Oslo where she works as a barista while he is an artist creating sculptures out of stolen furniture. Both hopelessly narcissistic and starved for attention, Signe grows resentful of Thomas’ success and begins devising new ways to draw the spotlight back upon herself including but not limited to trying to corner a dog into biting her or making a scene at one of Thomas’ art galleries.
Perusing the internet one day she stumbles upon a Russian anti-anxiety medication named Lidexol which is banned due to reports of users becoming infected by an extreme skin disease resembling a flesh-eating virus. Seizing the opportunity, she purchases some from a drug dealer and begins ingesting them regularly until legions and rashes begin forming on her face, forcing a hospitalization but through a bunch of selfies she becomes a viral internet sensation. When Thomas is indisposed by an interview with a major periodical, Signe escalates her ingestion of the poisonous pills in a twisted tango of one-up gamesmanship laced with lies and deceit.
Inspired by the director’s brief time living in Los Angeles while writing the script involving society’s almost chemical dependency on social media clicks for validation feeding into conceited and self-aggrandizing over-indulgences, Sick of Myself elicits the queasy feeling of a stomach cramp. At once jet-black hilarious and repugnant in equal measure, there’s a desire in the film to highlight how our conviction to the internet multiverse might transform if not sully who we are as people while distorting our values and needs. It’s not so much these characters are plainly evil so much as they’re an obvious byproduct construct of the world they’re living in. Mostly it speaks to absurdist extremes about the lengths people will go to crave the spotlight however degrading or deadly to one’s-self the means might be.
Shot on 35mm film with a grain structure and color palette that looks faintly like gritty 16mm thanks to Mandy cinematographer Benjamin Loeb, for all of its prosthetically rendered horrors the film looks painterly with texture rarely seen in modern movies. The atonal string heavy Penderecki-esque score by Turns help funnel in hair raising chills beset by the film’s strangely jokey tone, veering between being disturbing and delightfully silly. Both elements combined with the film's visual effects help make the slick high-life netherworld of Sick of Myself an unpleasant place to be.
Our main character Signe played brilliantly by Kristine Kujath Thorp gives our witchy yet cunning deceiver a Malcolm McDowell quality where part of you kind of loves the character much as you hate them too. Playing excellently off of Thorp as her just-as-bad (if not worse) partner is Eirik Sæther who despite his obvious success is something of a charlatan who craves the center stage equally as much. Last but not least are the practical makeup effects which are deliciously gruesome and disgusting, dripping with crimson and flesh at times that would make Jeff Goldblum’s The Fly blush.
Compared to Female Trouble by that film’s own director John Waters and championed by the likes of Bret Easton Ellis and Ari Aster for its acidic fangs-out snark and misanthropy, Sick of Myself premiered at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival before making a limited theatrical rollout in the United States followed by Utopia’s digital release and Vinegar Syndrome’s disc release. Still making the rounds among cinephiles and moviegoers in its infancy, the film is both an examination of (and exercise in) extremes people will go for a bit of fame.
Having the aura of a road accident you can’t look away from as you notice the car crash victim is posting selfies on Instagram, this is on film a blurred reflection in the mirror of our present generation raised on cellphones and iPads. A key recurring image has our anti-heroine Signe cloaked in bandages taking a selfie (looking a bit like Jack Nicholson in Chinatown) as blood from skin rot bleeds through. In a way, despite her awfulness, can you blame her? On the one hand its self-absorption to a grotesque new height but on the other hand those who live by the sword inevitably must die by it.
--Andrew Kotwicki
