Thomas (Eirik Sæther) tries to finish a speech in front of bougie art buyers but something’s afoot here. His girlfriend and Sick of Myself‘s protagonist (Kristine Kujath Thorp) doubles down on her fake nut allergy. In a way, doubling down is her thing, and she ups the stakes with her next feat which baffles me. Because this time, she takes a Russian drug that destroys her face, taking nudes at hospital. She bamboozles the Norwegian community of her getting a rare disease, becoming newsworthy only for a bit. Her next feat, though, may just be revealing the truth to her journalist friend Marte (Fanny Vaager).

Part of me is playing devil’s advocate while writing about Kristoffer Borgli’s new film which I like. A hater’s view of this is understandable, as this may be a flagellating view of millennial narcissism. It does have a different view of the self and human’s destructive impulses – it’s possibly unrelatable. But its lack of relatability turns around and makes it more fascinating, well, at least to me. Imagine destroying oneself to get attention from other people who will love that worst version of yourself. Sick of Myself is a heightened version of what people in real life do, let’s be real now.

Sick of Myself has a lesson – life has a way of playing people who think of themselves as players. Signe finds herself pacing her apartment after discovering that her plan of becoming famous isn’t bulletproof. I mean that literally – a news outlet pushes her story to the bottom thanks to a horrific murder suicide. People who have consciences would feel bad for the victims of said murder-suicide but not here. Compassionate people don’t exist, as one person’s misery serves to inconvenience some people. That’s true in real life as it is in this film, depicting boomer comedy with artistic sheen.

Borgli’s Sick of Myself is a film of warped reality, of dream sequences, fake outs, and trap doors, and yes, this film sells the idea that the average millennial can bamboozle doctors, which, well…. That can be a dream sequence, but the one where Signe tells Marte the truth definitely is. “Thanks for admitting you’re a liar, I smell book deal” is the right kind of crazy. The only reason Signe gets away with everything is because the idea of her downfall is bigger. The choices that this film makes for an exciting conclusion only art film lovers can dream of.

Sick of Myself is available to stream on MUBI, which-