Breathe
Sick of me
(Kristoffer Borgli,2022)
By Valeria Villa
Sick of Me is a film that tells the story of Signe (Kristine Kujath Thorp) and Thomas (Eirik Saether), a couple who relate aggressively with teasing, devaluation and exhibition of each other's weaknesses, with an amount of hostility and envy evident to all their friends who can no longer stand them.
Thomas is a narcissist in the clinical sense of the term: self-centered, absorbed in his recent success as a furniture designer, frivolous, in love with his own image and therefore blind to the existence of Signe, a cafeteria employee who feels invisible in the relationship. As he becomes more successful, she becomes envious of the attention he receives and begins to engage in behaviors associated with tragedy and illness in order to be seen.
There are many possible readings of this plot. The film raises the issue of the inexhaustible hunger to be seen and recognized, in the tone of a black comedy that uses a humor that becomes increasingly acid and twisted. It provokes in the spectator the same thing that generates in us the society of the spectacle in which everything is a matter of voyeuristic consumption, although it is something that is tragic and deadly at heart.
We don't know much of Signe's story, except that she has a father who has never been present in her life and a mother who doesn't seem too concerned about what might happen to her. Signe has fantasies in which it is she and not Thomas who has the attention and admiration of others. Incidentally, she begins to think about becoming famous for something tragic, monstrous or terrible, after she actively witnesses an accident at the coffee shop where she works. It is grotesque and almost implausible what Signe is willing to do in order to go viral, no matter if it is to arouse horror, pity, compassion or maybe a little love from her pathetic boyfriend.
One can also think of the narcissistic-dependent dyad which is a pathological combination of personality disorders, in which hunger and the desire to eat come together: generally a devalued woman who was neither seen nor loved by her caregivers, feels attracted to a man who neither sees her nor loves her because he only loves himself and by compulsion to repetition, repeats the traumatic history in the hope that this time the story will change and she will manage to be seen and loved.
This couple can also be understood as a pair of narcissists, he of the grandiose exhibitionist type and she of the inhibited type, prone to fantasies of success and power that are peppered throughout the film to illustrate for us the perfect, fantastical world in which Signe would like to live.
Thomas thinks he is special, unique. He is not capable of loving Signe, he doesn't care what happens to her, he mistreats her in private and in public. Everything she needs is a hindrance to him, a professional exploiter.
The need for admiration has been explained by the myth of Narcissus who could only love himself and who, hypnotized by his image, died drowned in a river. Today's culture affects this need to be seen and admired in a way that can become pathological. Why do we share our lives, selfies, academic and literary achievements, trips, ideas that seem brilliant or funny, if not to inflate our bruised egos?
The narcissistic wound is the origin of envy, exhibitionism, grandiose fantasies and also of a mental illness described in psychiatry as Münchhausen Syndrome, a disorder characterized by ailments as a consequence of creating ailments to assume the role of a sick person. The patient creates and even produces injuries to achieve physical and psychological symptoms in order to be considered and helped by third parties. It is also known as factitious disorder.
Michael Balint wrote "The basic lack" (1993), a text in which he explains that there are structural wounds that the subject will have to overcome throughout his life related to deficient, traumatic or negligent upbringing. From Signe we know that this lack of something is partly related to the absence of the father that is repeated with Thomas.
Signe and Thomas are two terrible narcissus, unbearable, hungry for looks in degree
pathological, a pair of pretenders capable of anything to shine. Of course her symptoms are shocking and painful to witness, as part of a picture that could also be described as psychotic in which she completely loses touch with the reality of what she is doing to her body in order to exist for others. Thomas seems to be just a heavy, selfish and vain, but he is also a sick man with psychopathic tendencies, willing to do anything to achieve success and visibility.
Enferma de mí is a modern-day story, of stupendous workmanship, in which the laughter is nervous laughter because what we are seeing is deep down horrible, terrible, sick, destructive. The director of the film reminds us that we are voluntary and amused spectators of the misery of others.
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