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Joachim Trier’s 2021 comedy-drama The Worst Person in the World made waves after its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival. Showered in extravagant praise for its depiction of millennial aimlessness, it’s exactly the kind of performance-driven, post-Girls, post-Fleabag, pseudo-arthouse exercise that plays well with most contemporary critics who have all but given up on examining a film’s spiritual or philosophical content, not to mention an audience that loves nothing more than seeing itself and the emotional terrain they are perpetually stuck in portrayed on screen — “I felt that,” goes the common refrain.
The same way this chic myopia has been elevated to not just the cultural default but to political praxis — concepts like self-care are commonly likened to radical activism in certain infographic-obsessed corners of the internet — so too have films of the “so real for this” variety been elevated to high art, regardless of their merits. But while The Worst Person in the World’s gloves-on portrayal of contemporary egotism nonetheless resonated with a certain “she’s so me” demographic — fittingly, it also earned a spot on Barack Obama’s focus-grouped-to-death “best of” list, part of a yearly ritual designed to reassure liberals of the former president’s non-plebeian cultural tastes, a questionable distinction — Kristoffer Borgli’s black comedy Sick of Myself (2022) goes for something meaner, less respectable, and far more visceral.
Signe (Kristine Kujath Thorp) and Thomas (Eirik Sæther) resemble a boomer’s idea of a city-dwelling millennial couple: living together in Oslo, Signe is an unfulfilled café worker — or “manager,” as she later claims — with a vicious narcissistic streak, while Thomas is a fledgling artist who repurposes stolen furniture into tacky sculptures. No less narcissistic than his partner, Thomas’ naked ambition and brazen disregard for private property eventually land him a solo show, the bougie Oslo art world seemingly desperate for the countercultural cachet that their association with the self-styled enfant terrible will bring. Signe, meanwhile, constantly devises schemes to garner sympathy and divert attention away from her artist boyfriend, a habit that sees her belittling the significance of Thomas’ exhibition, faking an allergic reaction while he delivers a nauseatingly pompous speech, and embellishing an already harrowing dog mauling episode she witnesses at work — she helps save a woman’s life but chooses to lie about the bystanders’ unwillingness to help — but despite her best efforts, Thomas’ star, somewhat inexplicably, keeps rising.
However, the attention-hungry Signe — reading the Daily Mail of all websites — soon learns of a Russian pharmaceutical that leaves its users covered in deep, discolored scars, and her fear of being overshadowed by the increasingly popular Thomas leads her to seek it out. Her deranged plan works: after secretly knocking back pill after pill of the powerful tranquilizer — she begins zoning out and even falling asleep at the job, with no apparent effect on her employment status — the small rashes that appear on her body swiftly veer into full-on disfigurement, her face swelling and leaking puss, leading a shocked Thomas to take her to the emergency room.
Once at the hospital, her head covered in bandages, she revels in all the pity that comes flying her way, milking her self-inflicted predicament for everything it’s worth. Worried bedside visitors (Signe is quick to make note of those who have failed to show up), puzzled doctors, an apologetic inamorato, and a contract with an inclusive modeling agency — the agency founder, Lisa (Andrea Bræin Hovig), appears to be quite taken with the web of scars enveloping Signe’s face — all follow. The condition even enhances her sex life as she gets off on Thomas feigning concern for her and describing what he imagines her funeral would have been like had she died (there’s a comically long line, a bouncer, and a guest list, and the friend that couldn’t make it to the hospital isn’t getting in, much to her dismay).
Writer-director Kristoffer Borgli wrote Sick of Myself while living in Los Angeles and the Norwegian production carries the spirit of American films such as Todd Haynes’ Safe (1995) and John Waters’ Female Trouble (1974), the latter being an even more deranged take on beauty and fame. Incidentally, Waters included Borgli’s film in his own year-end list, acknowledging the thematic similarities to his cult film and claiming “it’s just as nuts.” (A lot of cinephiles don’t put much stock in these kinds of lists but a nod from the perv pioneer John Waters will likely still hold more sway than one from a team of Obama interns.)
In spite of its American influence, the film does still bear a striking resemblance to a lot of thorny Scandinavian black comedies, the kind that made filmmakers like Lars von Trier and Anders Thomas Jensen household names. Its social satire is consciously calibrated to buck politically correct sensibilities — the specifically Scandinavian brand of “tolerance” especially — but the picture it paints isn’t just funny and absurd, it’s also deeply tragic. For these characters, everything has been reduced to performance, every interaction is really a transaction, and every life event (even tragedies) becomes mere social currency to be leveraged in an eternal competition with their peers.
It’s undeniable that there is an air of smugness around how Borgli critiques contemporary culture and it could similarly be argued that he’s going for very low-hanging fruit as even societal dislike of shameless egomaniacs has been folded back into the very spheres they thrive in — these days, those skewering influencers end up with the same brand deals as their non-ironic counterparts. But seeing just how low his characters are willing to go in pursuit of notoriety is at once hilarious and heartbreaking. When Signe’s “tell-all” interview, conducted by her journalist friend Marte (Fanny Vaager), gets bumped down in favor of a story about a deadly shooting, Signe becomes irate — “What fucking nerd shoots his whole family?” — angrily calling Marte up to see if there’s a way to make herself the top story again.
It isn’t the first time that the Norwegian filmmaker has taken aim at the cynical logic of marketing and (self-)promotion. His underseen, underrated 2017 debut Drib was a docufiction probe into the emptiness of consumer culture and its irreverent, unapologetically hipster point of view carries over into Sick of Myself as well. Borgli locks into 21st-century misery, rendering it as a cultural cul-de-sac where people constantly vie for ephemeral gratification that dissipates as quickly as it arrives but, for lack of anything more profound, is chased nonetheless.
For Signe, the desire for attention, the agonizing need to be seen, trumps all else — she sacrifices her relationships, morals, career, looks, and health in pursuit of it. The frequent dream vignettes that are seamlessly interspersed throughout the film’s 97-minute runtime offer insight into her thought process and reveal profoundly disordered thinking scraping against a genuine desire to finally leave all the lies behind. As such, her fantasy of finally telling Marte the truth doesn’t end in her being berated but with the reassurance that her lifetime of lies deserves even more attention than an article could afford her — “Signe, this isn’t an article,” the dreamworld Marte tells her friend with the kind of po-faced gravitas that could only spring from an intensely narcissistic mind. “This is a book.”
And yet, it’s hard not to empathize. In her own mundane way, Signe is an awful person — a liar, an attention seeker, a narcissist — but she is also wounded, imprisoned by her pathologies, pathetic in a way that many people can likely relate to. Her fantasies about her funeral hint at as a strained relationship with her father — as does a dream sequence set in a television studio where he apologizes for being “completely absent” after separating from her mother — but the exact nature of that relationship isn’t explored, nor is it ever clarified if he has indeed emotionally scarred his daughter or if he’s simply been contorted into a villain by her narcissistic delusions.
Once hooked on all the attention, Signe can’t stop consuming the banned drug, leading her condition to worsen in various ways — she throws up blood at one point — and the tolerance of the supposedly forward-thinking modeling agency (and, by extension, the fashion world in general) is revealed as a hollow farce once her appearance deteriorates to an unmarketable degree. Considering its subject matter, it’s unsurprising that Sick of Myself has been slapped with the trendy “body horror” tag, a label often invoked solely for marketing purposes — see Carter Smith’s Swallowed (2022) — but one that does, in fact, fit with the film’s thematic fixations.
Signe’s continuous physical decline mirrors her descent into narcissism and the eradication of her self — if there is such a thing — behind a curated, performative facade. What makes her unscrupulous quest for recognition so bitterly ironic is that she does display some genuine talent as a model. During a commercial shoot late in the film, she confidently poses in front of the camera as the director, producers, and crew look on, genuinely captivated. For all her anxiety about not standing out, her plan does finally afford her an opportunity to shine, only for her moment in the spotlight to fall apart amidst her failing health.
After the shoot ends in disaster it seems inevitable that Signe will have to make some changes to her life. Sitting alone in a barren apartment, she seems pensive, remorseful, willing to finally leave her old ways behind. But even a last-ditch attempt at coming clean is undercut by residual narcissism — “That’s kind of privileged of you to say,” she responds when Marte calls her behavior “insane.” Where the end stretch of The Worst Person in the World went for easy pathos and a neat conclusion that expertly masqueraded as something more complicated than it was, Sick of Myself offers the audience no such convenience. Although the end sees Signe finally ready to own up to her behavior, it’s too little, too late: left alone, with only her increasingly far-fetched reveries to comfort her, she retreats into blissful fantasy once and for all.