“Low Expectations”, interview with actress Marie Ulven

Presented as a special screening at the 23rd edition of Alice nella Città 2026, Low Expectations by Eivind Landsvik stars Norwegian singer-songwriter Marie Ulven, aka Girl in Blue, as Maja, a musician who falls apart at the height of her career and has to step away from her ambitions.

Depressed and broke, she moves back home with her mother and works part-time at a local high school, where, far from the spotlight and wrapped in everyday kindness, she slowly finds her way back to life.

Ulven talks about Low Expectations as a second coming of age, what her first experience as an actress taught her about creative stamina, why life is too short to worry about what others think of your art, and the tendency of adults to trivialize the problems of the young.

Low Expectations at Alice nella Città 2026: a second coming of age

For Ulven, Maja’s story is a coming of age that happens a second time: “The first coming of age is obviously when you’re like 14 and you think you figure out who you are. And she obviously went through that, and she found herself as an artist, a creative, and someone in that sort of world. And then, you know, maybe 11, 12 years pass and you realize: oh my god, I’m not that person who I thought I was. So I definitely feel like it’s a second coming of age movie.”

And, she hopes, not the last one: “I hope that life comes with many coming of ages in general. I really hope that life gives you new chances. So even if you’re like 40 and you just got divorced, that’s your new coming of age in a way. I definitely think that’s what happened to Maja, and I think she figured out some things.”

Marie Ulven on acting: what her first film taught her about creative stamina

Ulven admits she had no idea what to expect from her first film: “I didn’t know anything about making movies or acting in general. So I didn’t know back then what that would bring me.”

Today she treasures one thing above all: “I really, really cherish and I’m very grateful for the longevity. It takes a long time to make a movie, and I think that can influence your stamina when it comes to long form writing, or if you’re making a longer piece of music. When you’re on set all day and you’re doing a few scenes, you have to consistently stay in that temperature, that voice, that sort of mood. It’s the same thing when you’re writing a longer story, because you have to remember where you are, where you pick up and where you left. So I think that’s something that I really learned from acting, and something that I want to put into all the other art forms that I like to dabble in.”

Life is too short: Marie Ulven on making art without fear of judgment

Ulven believes in creating regardless of other people’s judgment: “We all get one life, at least here on earth, and I think life is too short to give a s*** about what other people think about what you make or what you write and what you do. I think a lot of people are scared to do anything. And I think the people that are the most scared are the people that hate the most on people that dare to make things.”

Even failure, she says, is not the end of the world: “If you do an album or you do some acting or you do anything and people perceive you, and maybe it’s really bad, the worst thing that happens is that the next day comes. Life goes on. So I feel like people should just do what feels right to them, as long as you’re not harming others.”

Remembering how it was: adults and young people’s problems in Low Expectations

When Maja is told that this moment of her life will one day be just an anecdote for an interview, Ulven sees something more than toxic positivity: “I think adults have a tendency to trivialize young people’s problems. So I don’t even know if it’s toxic positivity or if it’s just old people being unable to relate to young people.”

She quotes a line from The Perks of Being a Wallflower, which she calls “an incredible movie”: “There are people that forget how it was to be 16 when they turn 17. And it’s the same thing when you’re 38 or 40 years old, and someone who’s 25 is airing their problems, and they’re like: this is just something that is going to pass.”

It is a feeling she recognizes in herself too: “I constantly have to remind myself how it was. Suddenly you get a lot of responsibilities, and there’s this weird drifting into a world that just feels further away from the beginning of something. So swimming against the tide of that drifting, that I think we all experience, is incredibly important. It’s not to deny aging or your mortality, because it’s important to drift a little bit, that’s also growing up. But to look at young people and think that you don’t know anything because you’re just 17 is the most uncharming way of being.”

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