Sick of Myself (2022)

Sick of Myself  is yet another film that came out of the blue for me and my platformless life, a story that only the art world could have written  -- only to write it anyway.

Signe and Thomas are a young Norwegian couple who, though competitive with one another, are 21st century happy. That happiness is threatened when Thomas gets some attention for his art. Signe responds by doing what most platformers do when feeling left out: she presses the SICK button. In this instance, a Russian-made pill with disfiguring consequences. Sure enough, her disfigurations bring with them fashion shoots, and she seems perfectly happy calling out her detractors on their unscathed privilege.

Sick of Myself is not about competitive couples, narcissism, Simone Weil, nor the whiteness of Norway, but a response to the well-intentioned institutional mantra of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion. That director Kristopher Borgli, et al. have set this story in the contemporary art milieu should dispel any misconception you might have that artists are romantic loners, but are in fact the most institutionalized of all us.