Part of the Edinburgh International Film Festival

A first-time novelist who hits it big with her Lolita-style debut, Karolina (Magdalena Berus) soon becomes caught up in a downward spiral of drugs, sex and non-stop vomiting. Juggling several love interests, a fractious relationship with her family and the need to produce a solid sophomore offering, Karolina seeks solace in all the wrong places. The shock factor which won her novel critical and popular acclaim quickly asserts itself in her own life, jeopardising her talents, her happiness and her health.

The chronicles of a young tearaway killing themselves with the good times is nothing new, but director Kasia Rosłaniec does attempt to drag this genre of self-absorbed hedonism into the age of the hedonistic selfie by fragmenting the film into two-minute long snapshots of Karolina’s life. In that sense, we’re treated to the cinematic equivalent of a series of Vines, collected together out of order and presented as a jigsaw puzzle that ostensibly tells the same story regardless of its timeline.

However, that bold statement at the movie’s outset is patently untrue; despite attempts to insist that Karolina’s life will continue ad infinitum in a stage of perma-decadence, her own brushes with the A&E department and with mental degradation attest otherwise. The film glorifies Karolina’s escapades to some extent, though it’s made clear that this glorification is a mere sheen; an envy-inducing Facebook update or ecstatic Tweet designed to mask a crumbling interior. One particularly telling scene sees Karolina urge her friend to smile for a photo at a vintage sale when the friend would clearly rather poke her own eyes out with an ice cream scoop… but ultimately she relents and conforms to the selfie-loving stereotype we’re all groomed to aspire to.

As such, it’s a movie for the modern age of social media and unabashed egotism, far more concerned with how it looks than anything else. Indeed, in the brief interludes of Karolina’s prose that we’re treated to, it’s clear that her writing is trashy and shallow; Rosłaniec highlights the cheapness and disposability of contemporary society by creating a vacuous piece of cinema which provides a neat and self-fulfilling critique of its subject matter.

However, just because it’s successful in its takedown of the look-at-me generation, doesn’t mean you’ll necessarily want to spend too much time looking at it, either. On the whole, it’s an unenjoyable ride that comes across as more self-indulgent than insightful, meaning it ultimately misses its mark. With more relatable characters and a stronger sense of progression, Satan Said Dance has potential to really break ground and open eyes. As it stands, it’s over-preoccupied with its own stylishness, resulting in the same sad emptiness of the slogans which adorn its characters’ t-shirts and give the movie its title.