SICK OF MYSELF (2022)
SICK OF MYSELF (2022)
Our bodies our selfies
Signe works in a café in Oslo, Norway. Thomas, her oblivious boyfriend, is a conceptual artist getting famous for his installations of stolen furniture. Suffering as his nameless plus one at dinner parties and gallery openings, Signe hatches a Munchausian plan to attain her own media-friendly notoriety, one that includes taking a medication that will eventually disfigure her face. Lacerating, cruel, and utterly hilarious, Sick of Myself is the debut film from Kristoffer Borgli and a perfect farce for our time. It’s also the first Cinema Dirtbag selection Emily Schultz and I have completely agreed upon. Of course, there are personal reasons for that, as you’ll see from our commentary, which started 10 minutes before we even pressed play.
Brian J Davis: Emily Schultz, what’s it like to have a boyfriend who is a famous conceptual artist?
Emily Schultz: I don’t know. It’s been so long since then.
BJD: I know! And I decided I want to talk about being shitty-famous and my shitty-famous breakdown ten years ago. I have never done this because the only thing worse than being shitty-famous, is talking about being shitty-famous.
ES: You should define shitty-famous versus—
BJD: It’s a couple of things. One, I’ve made some pretty good art in my time. But I got famous for my dumbest art. That doesn’t feel so good. Also, at the peak of everything, I was doing nothing but press for months, and it really wasn’t the same as having a good career. I was merely painfully available.
ES: Honestly, if anything, you made way more of a living as an artist when you were an unknown.
BJD: And that was feeding into my breakdown moment. Here I was, being profiled by People Magazine. I remember it was the same time your father was dying. So, I realized none of this matters. I just wanted to get through it, and maybe it would end. And then a couple of weeks after that I had a 12-hour day of interviews. Nine a.m. with the UK. Ended the day at 9 p.m. talking to someone in Australia. And then I lay down on the bed and screamed into the pillow because I never wanted to hear myself talking ever again. Then the next day I stopped. I kept my commitments and whatever exhibition schedule was set, but I decided I didn’t want this. I’m going back to writing. Being a film grunt. Anything. It took me a while to figure out I wasn’t upset with myself, or my work. It was the bullshit coming out of my mouth in order to partake in this thing.
ES: That’s the intensity of viral fame.
BJD: Fame is all viral now. Viral fame may be a redundant term.
ES: But there are famous people who are still permanently famous. We’re not them.
BJD: That’s celebrity. I constitutionally couldn’t be. I remember after my epiphany there’d be emails from Buzzfeed and The Guardian, or even The Daily Mirror, and I would delete them, unread.
ES: What the fuck?
BJD: I would! And it was total freedom. And now that I realize that those emails aren’t coming back… I kind of regret that part a bit.
ES: It was also the worst year in my life and I know that only made things more stressful.
BJD: This is what this film really set off inside me. That I wanted to think about that time and how it changed us, almost physically. And how culpable I was in it. I was entirely culpable! Being shitty-famous is an unforced error, like Signe in this film. But there is a difference between me and them.
ES: What’s the difference?
BJD: The difference is one day I lay down on the bed and screamed into the void I had manufactured.
ES: You’re right. There is an immense parallel between this movie and what was happening in our lives ten years ago. He’s getting famous. She is falling apart. Literally, pieces falling off of her.
BJD: I feel horrible about the gender dynamics that, despite your entire remarkable career, my quick burn internet fame was somehow important enough that your publisher at the time included me in your bio.
ES: [Grumpily] Multiple publishers have included you in my bio.
BJD: I’d dump me at that point!
ES: It only made me work harder in order to defeat you.
BJD: There will be people who read this and say “Nice problems to have,” and that’s part of the problem too. That just reinforces that fame is the greatest value to achieve in life. Like, “How dare you consider it an illness or addiction?” You know what? You do a 2 a.m. Skype with German morning television. See how fulfilled it makes you.
ES: I don’t want us to portray this film as entirely about fame. It is about self and representation but also—
BJD: We haven’t even pressed play yet we’ve been thinking about it so much.
ES: Play it!
If you’re interested in Sick of Myself, and want to avoid spoilers, please stop here and stream or purchase it, because we talk the shit out of this one.
BJD: And welcome to Norway’s idea of a romantic comedy!
ES: This opening scene is playing so differently for me now that I know what’s going to happen.
BJD: They’re performing a dinner out as part of his art. It sets the tone for the entire film. And, interesting, she asks for credit as part of his art early on.
ES: I saw this as her being humiliated by going through with a robbery for art. But now I see it’s a betrayal of trust. He says he’ll give her credit but then avoids it.
BJD: Now let’s be film nerds. This was filmed on 35mm.
ES: And it’s gorgeous on disc.
BJD: On streaming it looked like a sitcom. Just one of the terrible things about streaming.
ES: This opening montage where he’s demeaning her in all these little ways.
BJD: And big ways.
ES: The resentment between them. It’s so well acted.
BJD: I wonder if that’s because of the no fuss no muss story. This is more or less a short story amount of plot and leaving that much space for the actors and not burying us with too much back story keeps them in the moment all the time.
ES: Oh my god. The dog attack scene.
BJD: And she tells stories after about being the hero. This is why we’re so attached to her. As writers, we’re constantly polishing whatever story we need to tell during a day.
ES: Not just writers. Everyone is rewriting their experience now to suit their needs in whatever moment. The first time I saw this I thought she was so traumatized by the attack she couldn’t remember correctly.
BJD: She’s so alone that she needs to believe she was the hero. And that’s why we give her these 97 minutes. She’s covered in someone’s blood, and doesn’t clean up just so she can go home and maybe get her boyfriend’s attention. And even then—
ES: He takes so long! Agonizing minutes before he realizes she covered in blood. Really, now that I watch this a second time, I see that Signe is acting these moments.
BJD: I still feel sympathy for her, but nothing she is doing is accidental. She is contrived, but we’re all in a grandly contrived culture now. Oh my God. Their food is so clean. I bet it was foraged.
ES: She’s saying the quiet parts out loud now at dinner parties.
BJD: Attention is giving her power! “At least it’s a small gallery, so the reception won’t look empty.”
ES: He did change the show title though, based on her criticism.
BJD: Everyone gets grace notes in this film. These are not cardboard characters acting out a thesis.
ES: The fake allergy scene. I love this scene. Actually, I’m in love with this entire movie.
BJD: You know, it was just 10 or 12 years ago that only TV shows needed good ratings. People didn’t need ratings.
ES: Oh my god, you’re right.
BJD: I looked at the reviews. Critics either loved the movie or they loathed it. And I think those ones did misinterpret it. In no way is it saying there aren’t people with lethal allergies, for example. It’s just charting Signe’s lowest common denominator approach for recognition.
ES: And he is still not acknowledging that she helped him with his art!
BJD: “I try not to let it control my life.” She’s starting to speak in prepared statements. There is a medical term for this happening in public. [Checks Google] Depersonalization! Seeing or hearing yourself in the third person. Have you ever felt that onstage or TV?
ES: I never felt that until I had to promote a novel during the pandemic. During Zooms I would feel lost in the moment, not sure if I was saying something I had said in a podcast that morning, or five minutes before.
BJD: I love everything about this movie. I would risk friendships to recommend this film.
ES: It puts us so completely in Signe’s world that we can’t help but empathize with her. We’re right there along with—
BJD: Her terrible decision making! Like deciding to take banned Russian antidepressants that cause a disfiguring skin disease, for attention.
ES: In the news article on the disease there was a flash frame of her with the condition. Everything in this movie so thought out.
BJD: It’s as streamlined as Ikea furniture.
ES: Everyone is this film is so disconnected or lonely. Even the darkweb drug dealer wants Signe to hang out with him and his concerned mom.
BJD: And she does. Again, this film hands out the grace notes and it’s the secret to these kinds of characters.
ES: Lidexol. So White Noise.
BJD: One of the great reasons to buy the Blu-ray is the director interview and learning things like: Lidexol is based on the Norwegian word for “suffering.”
ES: That’s what really clicked in this film for me. What starts off as a game, or a crazy scheme, becomes an addiction.
BJD: Shout out to Kristine Kujath Thorp. She’s performing a version of Signe “discovering” the onset of her skin disease, so it’s a performance within a performance and that is so fucking hard to do and she does it.
ES: One thing I want to say about that performance aspect of Signe is you can set out to do something so hurtful to yourself and still wind up genuinely helpless.
BJD: Let’s not forget to say: this movie is also completely hilarious.
[Thomas poses like a doofus during a photoshoot with stolen furniture he’s going to stack in a gallery.]
BJD: And that is shitty-famous, folks.
ES: It’s about vanity too. Look at him. He’s doing this while she’s destroying her beauty.
BJD: I don’t know if she’s destroying her beauty. During this first stage of her disease, her scarring is ornate and even floral.
ES: Well, she’s making herself more unique, I suppose?
BJD: Okay, here is my favorite thing this film does. As she’s making herself sick, she has all these fantasies of becoming famous for it: TV appearances, an alternative modeling career, a sold-out funeral. And when I first heard the plot of this film my expectations of what it would be like were more in tune to her fantasy scenes, and it’s not. Her fantasies fail. The film undercuts those. Her modeling career isn’t like the fantasy, it’s in fact a disaster. Her fantasy version of “success from illness” is what a lazier satirist would have stayed with.
ES: This is the best scene. This is every moment I’ve ever had with a doctor ever compressed into one.
BJD: A beautiful cameo from Anders Danielsen Lie, the costar of The Worst Person in the World. And now her sexy hospital selfie! My brain and heart have melted into a pool of confused awe.
ES: But her boyfriend hasn’t even told her friends she’s in the hospital.
BJD: And he brings her his cover story to make her feel better!
ES: “I mentioned you too. Not by name. But indirectly.”
BJD: One of my favorite scenes—he starts performing as the supportive boyfriend in front of a swooning woman on the bus.
ES: The sex scene. It’s such a tragedy. She fantasizes about him asking “How are you doing?” and it’s enough to make her orgasm. “Tell me about my funeral. Are people turned away?”
BJD: The critics who called this a cruel film aren’t that wrong. But it’s cruel with purpose, in the way Buñuel was.
ES: I feel like I’ve known so many of these characters. Intimately.
BJD: It has the simplicity of a myth to it. She gets what she wants. She’s famous. Then she destroys it because she can’t stop making herself sicker.
ES: That’s really my take. It’s about addiction, not to drugs, but to behavior.
BJD: My favorite boyfriend moment. He asks her not use that corner of their apartment for her interview and photoshoot because that’s where he did his interview and photoshoot!
ES: The face melting nightmare. Got me again.
BJD: The key to Signe is that she doesn’t have inauthentic emotions. Even if she’s causing her own illness, she’s feeling things authentically. Thomas tells her—casually, offhandedly—that he thinks she’s brave for publicly talking about her skin disease and she breaks down. It’s the greatest moment of her life.
ES: This is my favorite image in the film. Walking across the square in slow motion, famous, tossing her hair. She’s disfigured herself for this moment, but she’s ecstatic. And now, like a novelist at Barnes & Noble, she’s arranging her magazine cover to be on top.
BJD: You know, maybe this is the remake of A Star is Born that we actually needed. A really dark, Norwegian comedy version of a A Star is Born.
ES: Now he’s walking into a furniture store despite the fact he is famous in Norway for stealing furniture.
BJD: He can’t stop. Neither of them can stop.
ES: I’m not questioning it. I’m marveling at it!
BJD: Now her interview scene at the diverse modeling agency. It is as good, if not better than any Buñuel/Carriere scene for impeccable farce. Every beat is perfect and I can’t even breathe while watching it. Here’s an example of cruelty with purpose. It’s the modeling agent who is so cruel but she thinks she’s the best person in the world. She’s going to injure her arm patting herself on the back.
ES: Signe is asking her friends to toast to her bravery and modeling contract. This isn’t a fantasy?
BJD: It isn’t. She’s really like this now. “Thanks. We know what H&M is.” Scandinavian shade is the coldest.
ES: When I saw this before, I thought she and Thomas were on the same side—but they’re not. He’s only angry at the friends for what they say about him.
BJD: During the photoshoot she almost wins. I love that they let her get so close to a win, with everyone sharing these “I can’t believe she’s actually good” expressions, before it all falls apart again.
ES: Is bleeding from the scalp normcore?
BJD: And that’s how you feel after a 12-hour interview day! I think this fashion shoot crew are cowards. Benetton would be photographing the hell out of her collapsed on the ground in a puddle of blood. That would be a Benetton centerfold in 1993.
ES: I never did it, but I remember girls literally collected Benetton ads for their lockers.
BJD: They’re such a forgotten part of radicalization in the 1990s. All things aside, “Regardless” is an amazing name for an overpriced bullshit fashion line.
ES: I said before her fantasies are about connecting. I take that back. Not in this fantasy when she confesses everything and gets a book deal.
BJD: She’s hoping to do the American-style hustle of playing both sides of sin and redemption. But it’s not going to work in Europe! These people invented Krampus.
ES: I’m surprised that the boyfriend sticks around through everything.
BJD: Again, this movie actually has so much heart. They have each other.
ES: I think it might not be the best relationship.
BJD: Show me a good relationship!
ES: I’m trying!
BJD: We all are.