Causeway Review: Jennifer Lawrence And Brian Tyree Henry star

As a returning veteran who was wounded in Afghanistan, Lawrence gets a chance to once again turn the volume down and deliver a low key performance minus any hint of some of the flashier roles she has gotten since receiving her breakout first Oscar nomination in 2010’s Winter’s Bone. It is a pleasure to see this immensely talented star take it down a few notches and throw herself into an understated portrayal of a woman who is not only suffering from the effects of physical wounds, but more deeply the unseen wounds inside that have had devastating effects on her ability to live a normal life.

Lawrence plays Lynsey, who worked for the US Army Corps of Engineers in Afghanistan and experienced both body and brain injuries  when the vehicle in which she was travelling  hit an explosive. After a period of intense rehabilitation she returns home to New Orleans (shown in a different light than as seen in countless movies) where she moves back in with her mother (Linda Emond), a loving but very difficult personality who doesn’t help matters with a daughter needing re-direction in a life devastated by her wartime experience.

Taking tentative steps back into living, but actually longing to get well enough to take up another tour, she gets a job as a pool cleaner much to her mother’s dismay. It is something simplistic enough that she can handle it, or at least believes so, but when her truck gives out on her she takes it to a auto repair where she meets a mechanic named James (Brian Tyree Henry), with whom she somehow forges an unlikely friendship, one that both take to awkward levels after being casual new friends, both in their own tentative ways exploring the possibilities beyond. Their connection as it turns out is the shared physical and psychological recovery process from a life-changing accident, in James’ case involving a car and the death of his nephew, and the loss of a leg. In a poignant and beautifully underplayed scene the details of his own trauma come to light as they sit by a pool she is taking care of. The fragile connection of two very fragile people, aching for some human interaction but almost incapable of letting go of themselve is heartbreaking. Both are caught in the crossroads of needing to love again, or even for the first time, but unconvinced it is something they deserve or even desire at this point in their lives.