Sick of Myself <img src="https://img.icons8.com/ios-glyphs/20/000000/star--v1.png"/><img src="https://img.icons8.com/ios-glyphs/20/000000/star--v1.png"/><img src="https://img.icons8.com/ios-glyphs/20/000000/star--v1.png"/>

Sick of Myself

Sick of Myself is a jet black Norwegian tragi-comedy from writer/director, Kristoffer Borgli. It starts in a posh restaurant where Signe (Kristine Kujath Thorp) is being treated to a birthday meal by her irritating boyfriend, Thomas (Eirik Sæther). He tells her to take a fake phone call outside, and is soon after seen legging it down the street with a two-grand bottle of wine, waiter in pursuit. If this makes us question where the film is heading, the next scene amps up the perplexity. Signe is at work in a cafe when a fairly shocking 'incident' occurs. This acts as the spark to what follows with Signe, and well, it's no stretch to say it's certainly a confronting film.

Thomas is an up-and-coming modern sculptor, who makes shit out of stolen furniture. As the interest in his work grows, Signe finds herself being more and more sidelined. All the attention is on Thomas, even though Signe craves her share, after all "the police and paramedics all said I may have saved that woman's life." There's a brilliant scene at an after-show dinner where she fakes an allergy, that hints at her desperation. Awkward doesn't quite cover it.

The film dances along a fine line between mental health struggles and ripping seven shades out of the privileged 'me' generation. Fame whores and wellness freaks get a proper lathing from Borgli and some of his writing is squirm-inducing. I reckon he finds the right balance but it's a close run thing at times. Thorp carries most of the film and she has to take an enormous amount of credit for some of the stuff she's called upon to do. A cracking turn in an idiosyncratic film.

Sick of Myself opens Oct 5th at Luna cinemas.

See also:

I'll stay in Norway and recommend Morten Tyldum's Headhunters (2011) and Eskil Vogt's The Innocents (2021). Both great fun.

Comments

Wake Up Dead Man

Wake Up Dead Man (without a comma to be seen) is the third Benoit Blanc mystery, written and directed by Rian Johnson. Daniel Craig stars again as the Foghorn Leghorn-twanging detective but he's a touch overshadowed here by the 'supporting' cast, namely Josh O'Connor as young priest, Jud (Judas anyone?) Duplenticy, Josh Brolin as Monsignor Wicks and Glenn Close as church dogsbody Martha. Though it seems O'Connor is the new big thing, especially in indie films, I find him about as engaging as the weekly supermarket trip. In saying that, he's a pretty good foil for the rest of the characters, who have charisma by the bucketload. Blanc only appears around the start of act two, after all the set-up has been dealt with, in a very similar fashion to the previous films, Knives Out and Glass Onion . We gather that somebody has been killed on Good Friday, and the format for this exposition is a letter that Blanc asks Jud to write to him. This works well enough, (Keigo ...

It Was Just an Accident

The latest from Iranian director Jafar Panahi is a simple, yet brilliant story of a chance encounter with a bastard from the past that oscillates between revenge and forgiveness. We start on an almost uncomfortably close mid-shot of a man and a woman driving at night. They run over a stray dog and the mother explains to her daughter that it was just an accident, setting the stage for other events that may or may not have been accidental. Panahi fills the frame with his protagonists, faces, mostly in states of distress, to the extent that when the screen opens up to show a man digging a makeshift grave in a long shot with vast, lumpy hills in the distance, it's a massive relief of tension. This man is Vahid (Vahid Mobasseri), who thinks he has stumbled upon Eghbal, (A.K.A. Peg Leg or the Gimp) (Ebrahim Azizi), an Iranian intelligence agent who tortured him years ago. Doubt forces Vahid to enlist other victims to help identify Peg Leg, before any retribution is taken. The film is rid...

Predator: Badlands

So without me really noticing, this franchise has reached NINE films (if you include the two Alien vs Predator crossovers). The last three have been directed (or co-directed) by Dan Trachtenberg, who's also helmed an episode each of the TV shows Black Mirror and The Boys . I've got to say, carry on lad, because this is probably the best Predator film I've seen (let me revisit the Arnie one before I remove that 'probably'). This film starts as a revenge quest that soon morphs into a discourse on dysfunctional families and finding your groove in life. All wrapped up in a gnarly, bloody sci-fi romp. I say blood, in actual fact, none of it is human blood, all characters being either alien or synthetic humanoid. That in itself is one of the film's credits - none of the protagonists are human, and the nominal lead is usually a villain. Dek (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi) is from the Yautja race, the original 'ugly mother-fucker' Predator. The preamble n...

The Quiet Girl

This is a great film, especially in the way that it manages to create something interesting out of a reasonably mundane synopsis. A young girl is sent away to a relative's house for the summer where she is treated better than at home. Sounds like it could have a bit of Rohmer-style youthful awakenings? Or maybe some gritty Loach-ian societal comment? Even perhaps a revenge tinged 'fear the youth' theme? Well, it's none of the above, and more power to its style. The Quiet Girl herself (Cáit) is a newcomer, Catherine Clinch, and she was apparently found via an Irish language school call out. She's incredible - meek, direct, no airs nor graces whatsoever, with a clear-eyed awkwardness. She's almost like a little female Bowie in The Quiet Girl Who Fell to Earth (no, not a film but I thought I'd italicise anyway). There are orbiting performances that complement her perfectly. Carrie Crowley and Andrew Bennet play Eibhlín and Seán Cinnsealach, the couple who tak...

Nouvelle Vague

This opening screening of the Perth Festival's Lotterywest Film season is a cinephile's delight. It documents the production of Jean-Luc Godard's seminal feature debut, À Bout de Souffle (or Breathless ). The title refers to the New Wave of French film from the beginning of the 1960s, which railed against the tired, old ways of film-making. Nouvelle Vague actually looks like it was shot on film, it's riddled with scratch marks, there's are many big black dots indicating the end of the reel, and of course, it's in black and white. The director, Richard Linklater, is obviously a huge fan of Breathless . This is a lovingly made, breezy film, that isn't terribly hard-hitting or deep, but is a fine background to one of the classics. The casting is excellent, specifically the Jeans; Godard, Seberg and Belmondo, played by Guillaume Marbeck, Zoey Deutch and Aubry Dullin respectively. They all look the part and turn in performances just the right side of parody....

One Battle After Another

Before this film, Paul Thomas Anderson had at least one certifiable classic on his CV in There Will Be Blood . Now, make that two. In saying this, most of his films range from good to brilliant. This is his second adaptation of a Thomas Pynchon novel (after the uneven but interesting Inherent Vice ) and it looks at the lives of modern American revolutionaries, notably members of French 75. The group are apparently named after a WWI weapon, and then a cocktail, both of which have something of a kick. Leonardo DiCaprio plays Bob, The Rocket Man, who makes the ordnance for the group and is in a relationship with fellow revolutionary, Perfidia (Teyana Taylor). A combination of a run-in with Sean Penn's Colonel Steven Lockjaw, and a rash killing of a security guard triggers more interest in the group, and so a roundup begins. Perfidia is caught, then forced to name names before doing a runner. But not before she has a daughter with Bob, whom he is left to raise on the run. After this f...

The Fantastic Four: First Steps

A few years ago, we hit the S.S.P. (Superhero Saturation Point). And the best way for studios to arrest, or even maybe reverse, the law of diminishing returns is to JUST GIVE IT A FUCKING REST. There's enough residual goodwill in the fan base to guarantee profits....for now. But, as Malcolm Gladwell said, there must be a tipping point. So into this cinematic avalanche slips The Fantastic Four: First Steps , the first film of Phase Six and the thirty seventh overall! It's quite dull for the first 30 minutes, setting up the characters, ensuring the audience understands we're on a slightly different Earth (828), and a different time as well. It only gets going when the Silver Surfer (Julia Garner) appears and promises everyone death by devouring. She's not going to eat them, she works for a massive space turd called Galactus, played by Finchy himself, Ralph Ineson. He'll do the devouring. Here's the thing - this film is a perfectly serviceable entry, not brilliant,...

Don't Worry Darling

Here's a film that's had more said about the bullshit around it than the film itself. Therefore, I'll try to keep it relevant. This is Olivia Wilde's second feature and she's a bit of a dab hand at this directing lark. I haven't seen her debut, Booksmart , but have heard good things. In a nutshell, Don't Worry Darling (errant comma notwithstanding) is a stylish, speculative drama, with a patina of utopia-cum-dystopia that masks something far more commonplace and unsettling. Florence Pugh is the dutiful 1950s hausfrau of Harry Styles, who live in a postcard perfect sunny, desert community, presumably near the West coast of the US. Styles' Jack works for Chris Pine's pseudo-cult leader, Frank, in a mysterious compound just out of the town of Victory. Pugh's Alice spends her days with other wives, shopping, practicing ballet or getting pissed up. All's going swimmingly until one of Alice's friends, Margaret (Kiki Layne), begins to ask quest...

Final Cut

Around 15 minutes into this French remake of a Japanese zombie comedy I found myself wondering if this might be the worst film of the year, and even a bit guilty for suggesting Merv see it with me. Imagine my surprise, dear Viz readers, to be happily proven wrong. This is a great lark. The original, One Cut of the Dead , from 2017, seems to be a virtual template, aside from a few clever story angles that connect the two. In a gory nutshell, it concerns a film crew attempting to make a low-budget zombie film in an abandoned events hall, when a bunch of real zombies begin to queer the pitch. Directed (and adapted) by Michel Hazanavicius, of The Artist fame, this opened the Cannes Film Festival in May 2022. It stars one of my favourite actors, Roman Duris as Remi, the director, and Bérénice Bejo as Nadia, who has a fantastic reason for giving up acting. Their daughter, Romy, is played by the actual director's daughter, Simone Hazanavicius (also step-daughter of Bejo, it's all get...

Top twenty WWII films

The Guardian recently ran an article on the ten best World War II films, as voted by respondents to a Deltapoll for The War Movie Theatre podcast (see their list and link at the end of this piece). As this year is 80 years since the end of hostilities, I thought it might be interesting to run down my top twenty World War II films. Here we go: 20. Empire of the Sun (Steven Spielberg - 1987) This China-set drama of expats during the war in the Pacific theatre was Christian Bale's first big role at the age of 13. He's pretty bloody good too, as are most of the cast, including John Malkovich and Nigel Havers. Spielberg saw this J.G. Ballard story as a chance to make a comparatively 'darker' film about the loss of innocence and it turned out to be one of his very best. 19. The English Patient (Anthony Minghella - 1996) All the press for this film was the love story angle between dreamy Ralph Fiennes (pre-Voldemort, of course) and elegantly icy Kristin Sc...

Film Shapes

Search This Blog