Exploring themes of mental health, emotional recovery, companionship, and the uncomfortable stillness of contemporary existence, one of the most assured feature debuts to emerge from this year’s Directors’ Fortnight was Low Expectations. What Norwegian filmmaker Eivind Landsvik gets right is that it is through fragile everyday interactions, small acts of care, and the communal bonds that individuals are able to slowly rebuild themselves. Anchored by a first-time lead actress girl in red (Marie Ulven), this feature debut rejects familiar mythology of the tortured creative genius, instead its boredom, routine, or the plain act of just existing that gives the film its dramatic weight. Following the film’s world premiere, I sat down with Eivind Landsvik to discuss working with Marie Ulven, depicting recovery through restraint rather than melodrama, the film’s visual grammar, and whether Michael Mann’s Heat (1995) is indeed a masterstroke.
