Allison Janney embodies resilience in new Netflix film Lou, Directed by Anna Förster (Underworld: Blood Wars, stranger, jessica jones), a family drama mixed with an action thriller wrapped in Canada’s rainy and muddy terrain.
The title character Lou (Janney) lives a relatively solitary life on a remote island, but what quickly becomes apparent (without spoiling major plot points of the film) is that Lou is battling some demons from her past.
Lou’s life takes a turn when her tenant Hannah (Jurnee Smollett) runs to ask for help to rescue her kidnapped daughter Vee (Ridley Asha Bateman). It takes these two women on a rough, brutal journey through the woods to rescue this young child, but when Hannah finds out Lou isn’t just her landlord, they have a shocking connection that involves her daughter’s kidnapping.
“The first thing that struck me was that … you can’t pigeonhole this story, it has so many elements, so many facets and there’s action, there’s thriller, there’s suspense, there’s drama, there’s There’s some pretty dark themes, there’s levity,” said director Anna Foerster Yahoo Canada. “Certainly I didn’t see the role of Lou [before]but I’ve also never seen two women like this working hand in hand on a story like this.”
“What was really interesting for me was the opportunity to tell a story about the resilience and strength of women, but also to show that you can’t underestimate the power of a mother who loves her child unconditionally. If you’re gray and wrinkled, that doesn’t mean you’re a wimp.”
Allison Janney fights ‘dirty’ as woman in ‘aging body’
Not only do Lou and Hannah battle the weather and rough terrain, Lou in particular has some massive fight sequences, but director Anna Foerster stressed that one of her priorities was making sure every fight sequence in the film had purpose and meaning.
“We’ve talked for a long time about the fact that every single fight has to be part of the story and move the story along, but also have to be very true to the character,” Foerster said. “Personally, I have to say that what happens to me when I’m watching a movie that’s very combat-heavy, I let myself go when the fight is going on, and then let me go again as the story progresses.”
“The fight against this Allison [Janney] did, and she basically did almost anything for her own fight, it’s realistic that a 60+ year old woman in an aging body can actually do… She’s not a superhuman person, she’s not genetically engineered, she’s not an alien , she’s a woman in her 60’s and some things on her body hurt… So we had to spend a lot of time figuring out how to create the fights that made sense to her, and part of that has to do with how superior she is because because of her intelligence, because of her education, … she had to fight dirty.”
While the cast went through some rehearsals before shooting, the bulk of the preparation lay in the stunts for safety reasons, but as Foerster pointed out, it also really helped bond the cast and build that trust between them.
“A lot of this movie isn’t shot on stage, it’s out there in the real world and in the real mud,” Foerster explained. “The dynamic between the actors developed very quickly and very well, and I was very impressed.”
One example the director highlights is a sequence near the end of the film where Janney fights Logan Marshall-Green’s character on a beach.
“The fight ends … in the water, which was a decision I really hoped to keep because … it wasn’t easy to do, it was potentially dangerous. We were very much at the mercy of the tides and the height of the waves [were]”…that was definitely not easy to navigate,” said Foerster.
“When Logan pushed Allison underwater, … I gasped at how much trust they had in each other.”
“It feels claustrophobic”
While Allison Janney in particular is a compelling force Lou, The British Columbia landscape plays an important, powerful role in this story as a visual representation of the inner turmoil of these characters.
“I would describe myself as an outdoor person and I know very well what it feels like to be somewhere in a storm, somewhere in the wilderness, and how relentless, how dangerous and how indifferent nature is,” says Anna Foerster.
“In the beginning…we had open spaces and sun,…but then when the storm comes, it was very important to me that even when they go in, the forest becomes claustrophobic. We did that during the night, we basically worked so that what you see is mostly in the beams of your flashlights… You have this vastness all around you and yet you live in this tunnel vision of what’s right in front of you lies from you.”
As tensions rise, rain, mud, darkness and close-ups help you feel how trapped Lou and Hannah are, but by the film’s end, visual changes in the scenery reflect the arc of the story.
“What was really important to me is creating that parallel between the inner storm these women have to go through and the outer storm they have to go through,” Foerster said.
“These two women have to go into the woods and it gets messy, … and it reveals things, it reveals things about these women that they didn’t even know [about] themselves… When they come out the other end and the storm stops and the clouds clear, they have been transformed by this ordeal and there is a sense of clarity and determination.”
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