Sick of Myself review: a divinely dark Norwegian tale of pure, unhinged narcissism.
permanently disfiguring yourself in order to feel loved probably won't fix all your problems, but you don't need me to tell you that.
Sick of Myself (Syk Pike), 2022 🇳🇴 d. Kristoffer Borgli, seen at LAB111
Ok so first of all, here’s the trailer. It gives away the main plot of the film, so y’all can’t accuse me of spoilerinos. The film explores the process and consequences of this main plot, and I will be discussing it below. Therefore, there aren’t really plot spoilers, but discussions about the decisions made by the characters and the film’s themes. Maybe that’s a spoiler by your standards, so proceed at your peril! I, on the other hand, think you should read the whole thing then watch it then fight me in the comments.
Absolutely repulsive Oslo art yuppies Thomas (Erik Sæther) and Signe (Kristine Kujath Thorp) are in a toxic relationship, built on a foundation of image management, one-upmanship, and jealousy. Thomas is a wanky artist whose career has suddenly taken off. His USP is that he steals things (mostly, it seems, chairs) and displays them as found objects, which isn’t art now is it. Signe works in a cafe, and is jealous of Thomas’ growing success, existing in his shadow. They are both talentless and entitled, but only Thomas has found a way to make it into a career. Signe is seething with envy.
One day, a woman staggers into the cafe where Signe works with a terrible injury, bleeding everywhere. Signe stems the blood from her wound whilst cradling the woman in her arms, while the emergency services are called. Signe tells the policeman who interviews her, her friends, and basically anyone who’ll listen that everyone else in the cafe was frozen in shock and did nothing to help (which is, of course, a big old fib), and that if it hadn’t been for her bravery, the woman might have died (with no proof of this whatsoever). She walks home from the incident in her work clothes, still stained with blood. Everyone she passes stares at her. At home, Thomas sees the blood and panics. Signe is vague on the details, causing Thomas to search frantically on Signe’s body for the source of all the blood. Eventually, in her fake flustering, she admits that there is no wound, it’s not her blood, and yes she did walk home dressed like this. An extremely sympathetic view of this is that she is in shock and processing the trauma she has just witnessed. However, as we shall go on to see, the high she gets from these stares from passers by, Thomas worrying that she is hurt, the policeman interviewing her - it’s nourishing her.
Her desire to keep chasing this high leads to Signe buying some freaky Russian pharmaceutics that she read about on the internet, and popping so many of them that it permanently disfigures her face. It works - it gives her the attention and recognition she believes she deserves, and suddenly she gets to be the centre of attention. People want to talk to her instead of Thomas for once, doctors are baffled, and everyone feels so sorry for her. She is having the time of her life.
That’s right kids! It’s another case of Munchausen!
As the viewer, we’re getting to watch this whole charade unfold from the outside in. That her friends or partner don’t realise she’s taking them for a ride isn’t shocking. People are generally good and credulous, because they don’t expect people to be so blindingly dishonest. But in reality, she isn’t taking them for a ride. She actually is sick. When people get sick from Munchausen - for real - it’s when it’s by proxy. Parents, often the mother, make their child sick for the sympathy (the most notorious case probably being Gypsy-Rose Blanchard). Parents poison their kids and they reap the rewards - money, sympathy, attention - unscathed. When it’s Munchausen without proxy - “factitious disorder imposed on self” - the notorious cases which make it into the news are more often than not people just saying they have an illness (almost always cancer) and embezzling the funds kindly donated for medical treatment and charity (Belle Gibson springs to mind). They don’t seek medical treatment and refuse to let doctors get to the bottom of it, for obvious reasons.
That’s what makes Signe different. People fake cancer because it’s visually pretty easy to do so, at no harm to themselves. No one actually wants to be sick, they just want the sympathy and the donations. Signe goes to the hospital and they’re totally baffled. Maybe she knew they’d never trace it back to the pills she’s taken, though it’s more likely that she hasn’t thought that far ahead. The pills that she buys off the darkweb cause her extreme facial disfigurement. She cannot hide it, which is entirely the point. And from the look of it, it’s permanent. To actually make yourself so intensely ill, to the point where you’re coughing up blood, when your hair is falling out in clumps, where your eyes are almost puffed shut - and still not stop and think, hang on, maybe I’m the problem - is totally fucking insane.
In a bizarrely touching but still extremely fucked up way, Signe’s actions actually improve her relationship with Thomas. Not in a way that sane people like us would find nice, but good enough for her. You can see the actual genuine delight and joy on Signe’s scarred and raw face when Thomas says (after being somewhat pressured) that he’s proud of her. Thomas also gets to enjoy his new role as a sympathetic, selfless, and caring boyfriend when he’s seen with his clearly ill girlfriend in public. Look at me and my horribly disfigured girlfriend, everyone! I can see her inner beauty! When friends of theirs finally lose their tempers at the pair of them for being so incredibly self absorbed, it really brings them closer together. They bond over it. Please don’t feel inspired by this, for the love of god.
I’ve also been thinking about whether what Signe does is more or less ok than the people who steal charitable donations by pretending to have cancer. Signe isn’t after money. Unsurprisingly, these Munchausen cancer scams almost always happen in the US, where healthcare is outrageously expensive and big sums need to be raised to pay for treatment. Signe, blessed by living in Norway, doesn’t need money to pay for the treatment. She isn’t after money. All she wants is attention.
And attention she gets! Well, sort of. Her friend who is a journalist covers the story of her “mystery skin disease” in one of Norway’s main newspapers, which thrills her until a man somewhere else in Norway shoots his entirely family dead and knocks her story down the newspaper’s homepage. Signe finds it hard to hide her fury. Through dream sequences, we see what she actually wants - talkshow slots, a book deal, the chance to “tell her story”, and her estranged father reappearing to apologise for losing contact. She quickly realises that going viral isn’t as easy as it looks.
One of the criticisms that I read in another review is about one of the minor characters near the end of the film. Signe is snapped up by an alternative modelling agency that showcases unconventional beauty. The apparently able-bodied agency boss has a blind assistant called Nora, whose job it is to fetch coffee and water and hand it to guests, which is naturally extremely difficult because she cannot see. She breaks glasses and comments that if things were kept in the same place she’d have less difficulty. The agency boss seems genuinely pissed off at how useless her assistant is. In Nora’s other scene, she is tasked with calling an ambulance during an emergency, which is naturally very difficult for her to describe to the call handler because, as I have mentioned, she cannot see.
This film critic chastised this character as being in bad taste. I, on the other hand, having a sense of humour, found Nora’s character and how she was treated to be not only darkly hysterical, but entirely the point. It is a pisstake on the cult of inclusivity. This “everyone is beautiful” modelling agency’s agenda is that unconventional beauty is still beauty, and the lengths they go to to not treat people differently manifests in them hiring some poor blind woman to be the bullied assistant. Why should they give her special treatment? Why shouldn’t she call the ambulance to describe an emergency that she can’t see? Why should she not be told off for smashing glasses? This whole schtick with Nora juxtaposed with Signe being spoken to delicately about her fake “condition” with the boss is just so deliciously dystopian. As my dear friend Tim put it, this critic complaining about poor taste has the media literacy of a fucking rock.
So is this… bad? Obviously yes. You shouldn’t lie to your nearest and dearest about your health. You shouldn’t publicise your bullshit in the national press, or use your new found notoriety to get an underwhelming modelling career. It’s not a victimless crime, but the only victim is Signe herself. At some point she’ll realise that she disfigured her face to spite her face. Being an attention seeking arsehole isn’t a crime, and if she didn’t try to get material gains out of her lies, is that illegal? Probably not. It just makes you a shit person.
Therein lies the only slight critique I have of this film. We don’t really see Signe get her comeuppance. There is no satisfying conclusion, and we don’t really know what happens to her. I, being a completist, would have happily sat through a 10 hour director’s cut where the entire story is examined in minute detail from beginning to end. Then again, I don’t really know how it would have concluded. In one of the many dream sequences of the film, her confiding the truth to her journalist friend results in her being given a book deal and the chance to tell her side of the story, leading to even more fame and recognition. As life is often far more boring that we’d like to admit, I imagine what would actually happen if the truth came out being something along the lines of all her friends ditching her for being such a sociopath. I’m on the fence about how Thomas would react. Though in fact, she does tell the journalist friend what happened. It’s a short scene, and Signe’s total lack of humility and insistence that she is somehow a victim causes her friend to nope the fuck outta there within two minutes. Signe is obviously upset, but not upset enough to see the damage she has done. Given everything we’ve learned about Signe in the film, it would take an enormous look inwards and reconfiguring of her entire personality to gracefully admit wrongdoing and seek forgiveness. She would never.
Like many films, this is a commentary on our fucked up instagram obsessed likes-chasing narcissistic society, yada yada yada. It just does it so well! The acting is excellent. It is honestly some of the most unhinged shit I’ve ever seen. But yet, it’s still so relatable. The things Signe does for attention are wildly extreme versions of things we see in ourselves or others. Deep down, all she wants is to be noticed and appreciated. Her boyfriend can’t seem to be bothered, and she doesn’t have the substance to impress or achieve in other ways. It’s a classic case of narcissism; doing anything to get the attention she feels she is entitled to, except earn it. And it’s also just a sad, sad portrait of someone who just wants to be loved, and goes about it in literally the worst way possible. It’s 1 hour and 35 minutes of pure, toe-curlingly cringe, delightfully awful entertainment. Please go and watch, and tell me if you like it!
Sick of Myself is screening in the UK and the Netherlands right now!
UK screenings can be found on Flicks
Dutch screenings on Cineville
Streaming soon on Curzon Home Cinema (date tbc)