couple in the center i’m tired of myselfHe loves to play games, an exciting Norwegian comedy that hits select theaters on April 12.
Say they’re at a fancy dinner. Thomas (Eirik Sæther) is there to celebrate the new art exhibition, and Signe (Kristine Kujath Thorp) is responsible for small talk among the guests gathered to honor her exhibition. The night is all about Thomas, so Signe fakes a nut allergy and pretends to pass out in the middle of her boyfriend’s toast. Everyone’s attention turns to him. The job is done.
Let’s say this game has a few issues? Sometimes Signe and Thomas don’t even realize they’re playing the game, and a relationship built on permanent superiority cannot be plausible. Also, someone so determined to monopolize the limelight wherever he goes, how far does this gluttony get him? Inside i’m tired of myselftakes Thomas, and Signe in particular, to unholy extremes that are tentatively familiar to anyone familiar with the contours of modern life. The ultimate goal is to become famous, infamous or the star of every room – this provides ample opportunity for self-victimization if that means gaining social points.
Signe wants to be all of that. She embellishes the anecdotes in a heroic way, asks Thomas to narrate her funeral during sex, and is disappointed when a server at a restaurant doesn’t realize she’s stolen a $2,300 bottle of wine. As Thomas’ artistic success grows, Signe can barely stand it. So she asks the drug dealer to find a Russian drug that is known to cause a terrible rash so that anyone who sees it won’t roll their eyes. Say the millennial Munchausen’s.
Author and director Kristoffer Borgli conceptualized i’m tired of myself with a clear idea of her protagonist: “a cute, blond, privileged white girl in Oslo with a terrible skin disease” and she deliberately infected herself. The image hovered in Borgli’s head for a while and took shape in 2016 when he noticed two phenomena.
First, social media allowed anyone to brand themselves as traditional celebrities do, accumulating influence, money, or both in the process. Second, the fashion industry’s sudden offer of inclusivity was dominated by glorifying bodies and faces that weren’t that thin or flawless. He decided that Signe’s medical condition would attract the attention of a vulgar modeling agency interested in commodifying her crooked appearance. He would have an economic incentive to keep cheating and a clear path to fame. More pills means more magazine covers and more excuses for people to admire her supposed stamina.
“I wanted to start with a Woody Allenian relationship movie about an eccentric couple who suddenly take really dark turns and turn into body horrors,” Borgli tells The Daily Beast’s Obsessed. “One of the biggest reliefs for me from literature or movies has been seeing behavior or thoughts worse than mine. I love that feeling when I say, ‘I’m not that bad.’ It’s like the moral canary in a coal mine.”
call i’m tired of myself Fear of the body can be misleading. Don’t be fooled into thinking that Signe’s journey puts him in David Cronenberg territory, the movie remains a raucous satire from start to finish. But the humor gets a little crazy and the whole thing can leave you feeling spiritually deprived, whether you see yourself on Signe or just reflecting on the crooks and bullies trying to manage viral recognition. If nothing, you probably know a Signe. They’re everywhere these days.
Premiered at the Cannes Film Festival last year, many people who watched the movie joked that the name of the movie was too bad. World’s Worst Person had already been taken. The hero of that particular Norwegian hit wasn’t all bad, but Singe could be. i’m tired of myself does not share Worst PersonIt’s the romantic spirit of ‘, but there’s some overlap beyond the interchangeable names of the two films. Anders Danielsen Lie plays a doctor who tells Signe some bitter truths and Worst Person director Joachim Trier provided feedback to Borgli while editing.
Together, the films show Norway’s growing film industry. John Waters recently included i’m tired of myself On his annual favorite movies list, he called it “as crazy”. Women Issue, Another pitch-black comedy about fame, drugs, and the beauty industry.
part of the doer i’m tired of myself The absence of pathology is very effective. “He’s really upset, even though he doesn’t really understand it,” says Kujath Thorp. “I think he’s a very sad character and I have a lot of sympathy for him.” We get background strips, but no psychoanalysis to explain the roots of Signe’s narcissism. Describing him as stuffyly confident, Kujath Thorp filled in some of Signe’s biography for himself and sent video diaries to Borgli, where he improvised the character. Some of the information Kujath Thorp found went into the script, such as insisting that it would be “extremely valuable in mitigating a state of terror.”
It’s unclear, though, exactly how Signe and Thomas became so abusive. Borgli says that Kujath Thorp and Sæther asked a lot of questions about why Signe and Thomas were together. He didn’t always have an answer that sounded more realistic than it sounded.
“My answer was always ‘Because it’s funny,'” Borgli says. “They are the only ones who will accept each other at this point. They are connected in this way: “We are equally terrible, and therefore we can live together.” Their eccentricity is not visible in the small solipsist balloons. This competitiveness is just white noise for them.”
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