If our addiction to our phones — thus, our incessant need for distractions and entertainment — is any indication, humankind increasingly refuses to surrender to boredom, even though a great deal of life is made up of ordinary, nothing moments that we ought to embrace rather than avoid. In his gentle and minor-key feature debut “Low Expectations,” filmmaker Eivind Landsvik delicately excavates the truth of those moments, through the eyes of a young artist who must learn to survive them on the heels of a mental breakdown. What if your young years were consumed by a series of extraordinary high points, and the time has come for you to handle the pain of just existing in the tediousness of everyday life?
While it’s a worthwhile question to ask, it doesn’t necessarily scream riveting cinema at first, at least on paper. And yet through this basic existential query, Landsvik manages to pull off something surprising: a slow, quiet and life-affirming late coming-of-age tale you don’t want to look away from.
Much of the film’s captivating power is thanks to Norwegian singer-songwriter-producer Marie Ulven (also known as Girl in Red in music circles), playing Maja, a young musician who seems to have reached cult status online, perhaps a little too early in life. After an emotional and mental collapse due to the pressures of stardom and expectations of her fanbase, and a lengthy mental health break, she is now back at home living under the care of her sympathetic mother (Tone Beate Mostraum) and working a humdrum job at a modest high school.
