‘Low Expectations’ Review: Eivind Landsvik’s Tender, Joachim Trier-Adjacent Drama Wisely Suggests Embracing Stillness is Tougher Than It Looks

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.

Maja’s new job is the exact opposite of the world she used to inhabit. Once a touring and partying star musician with a dedicated following, she is now a substitute teacher of sorts, hired to watch kids as they take their written exams. In other words, she is just there to witness the minutes go by, one excruciating second at a time.

Ulven plays Maja with palpable vulnerability and honesty, someone hardened into fragile indifference. In establishing her new reality at school and at home, Landsvik takes a deeply familiar page out of the Joachim Trier playbook of tenderly revelatory exchanges, flowing character rhythms and sharply observant moments where humor and melancholy are inseparable counterparts. Still, despite navigating familiar waters, he avoids being a Trier carbon copy through his moodily opaque cinematography (by Andreas Bjørseth), an acute sense of place and a dedicated cast of actors equally quick to crack a joke and pull at emotional heartstrings.

The film’s bittersweet tonal strengths are exemplified in a shopping scene where Maja runs into an old flame and collaborator, and ends up buying random clothes and shades that she can’t afford in a quest to hide from him. The scene both underscores the character’s profound reserves of sadness in heartbreaking fashion, unfolding with eloquent flashes of wit.

Another Trier connection here is one of the filmmaker’s regulars, Anders Danielsen Lie, playing senior school administrator Johannes. When he isn’t in deep conversation about “Heat” being one of the greatest movies of all time with his buddy Oscar (Snorre Kind Monsson) — wait until you see the duo do certain “Heat” impressions in their respective character introductions — he takes a platonic interest in Maja, trying to ease her into her new workplace via friendly check-ins.

In affectionately braiding the events of Maja’s past with her present, in a hopeful narrative where healing takes a village, Landsvik’s script gives us a full-fledged portrait of a burdened, kindly and brilliant female artist, one that feels like an instant antidote to the unpleasantly ill-tempered male-genius trope. Despite that optimism, Landsvik still engages with Maja’s rightful annoyances with the world she is forced to live in. At one point, we observe as she calls out a white teacher for her casual racism against one of the school’s immigrant employees. Elsewhere, we go deep into her lingering trauma when she opens up to Johannes and explosively unpacks her familial grievances to her mother. These scenes prove Landsvik’s truthful intentions towards a complex character that he can’t help but adore.

Optimism wins the day in “Low Expectations,” especially when the opportunity to teach music arises: Maja is introduced to an ahead-of-her-years student dancer (Embla Berntsen) who’s followed her career with artistic aspirations of her own. It is perhaps partly the possibility of having and influencing a future that helps Maja to move forward. But more important than moving forward is learning to sit still, the toughest challenge for us all.