A wry, gruff and hypercompetent Alison Janney shines in Lou, a Netflix original set to drop this week (September 23rd), in a role with little obvious glamour.
Janney, as the titular Lou, plays an unsmiling loner who does her best to avoid her neighbours, or any human contact, including with a young mother (Journee Smollett) and her daughter.
Her none-too-friendly woman of the woods gender-flips a role that might once have gone to Harrison Ford or Tommy-Lee Jones, or even (whisper it) Liam Neeson. Where a veteran male actor might have grizzled and growled his way credibly through this film’s terse dialogue and set pieces, Janney proves utterly believable as a woman of ruthless, efficient action in Lou’s trailers.
Lou, on Netflix
A strong protagonist with greying hair and clean face remains refreshing in an industry landscape that still makes a capable woman in a physical role, not leather-clad and over 35, an anomaly.
The changes here make a tired set of action movie tropes just a little more interesting: the trailer implies her precious secrets are of the official, heavily redacted and ultra-covert kind – her particular skills clearly not learned in ‘Girl Scouts’. Said secrets threaten to surface when her neighbour’s daughter goes missing, seemingly abducted by Very Bad Men from Lou’s past (Logan Marshall-Green and Matt Craven).
The women reluctantly join forces in a bid to rescue the missing girl, seemingly without outside help. The mission unspools amid murky scenes of bone-crunching, tooth rattling violence in darkened rooms, dense foliage and driving rain, as well as frenetic flashback scenes that tease at Lou’s former life.
Lou’s central character makes no concessions to conventional Hollywood markers of female likeability, (it’s not quite cult classic The Long Kiss Goodnight, though it retains a little welcome dry humour) and the film should, at first glance, pass the Beschdel test with flying colours – perhaps a low bar for female representation in film.
Helmed by a creative team that includes JJ Abrams (Lost, Star Trek) as producer with another woman in the director’s chair (Anna Foerster, a director and cinematographer with action pedigree – longtime collaborator of Roland Emmerich, working on Independence Day, Alien Resurrection, The Day After Tomorrow, Godzilla and other multiplex blockbusters), Lou’s trailers suggest an otherwise conventional narrative and familiar pinch points for its characters. Aside from its notable female leads, Lou’s therefore unlikely to break any moulds, though it may contain enough novelty and tension to make for a diverting couple of hours on an idle Friday night.
Related: The Serpent Queen (2022), Streaming On Starz Now