'Causeway' Review: Jennifer Lawrence as a US Army soldier returns to her independent roots in a pessimistic tale of trauma and recovery

"Causeway", starring Jennifer Lawrence as a US Army soldier recovering from physical, mental, and spiritual wounds, is the furthest thing from a genre film. Still, he belongs in what I've come to think of as a genre: slow-burning non-verbal indie gloomfest. By saying this, I do not want to shed light on the subject. Lawrence plays Lynsey, a member of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers who returns from Afghanistan after riding in a vehicle that's hit by a bomb, causing a brain hemorrhage. At first, she sits in a wheelchair, waiting for the home health aide (Jayne Houdyshell) who is going to look after her while in rehab. Tentatively, Lynsey begins to walk, but for a while she has trouble bathing, driving, remembering things. The brain injury shattered and weakened her; he is a fragmented person.

Director Lila Neugebauer establishes an atmosphere of desperate reluctance, framing Lynsey in scenes where she doesn't not do or say much, because she can't. Before long, however, she begins to recover. She regains her strength, the colors return to her face and the film lets us know that her brain, although exhausted, is functioning well. Yet the mood persists. (Her spirit remains shattered.) "Causeway" is set in Lynsey's hometown of New Orleans, and after she arrives at her mother's home to continue her recovery, she rests in the bedroom when the mother, Gloria (Linda Emond ), walks in and sees her for the first time. They talk about why she's here a few days earlier. And that's the whole conversation. Not a "So how are you feeling?" Is Gloria an insensitive monster parent? No, as we get to know her, she seems quite sensitive to her daughter's well-being. So why didn't she even want to ask how she was doing?

Because it would break the monosyllabic spell downer. There's a certain type of indie film that still mirrors the "Tender Mercies" model, showing us characters expressing their trauma by choosing not to express it, as if it would blow them away. This mood - of pain hanging in the air, of unspoken despair - creates a kind of meaningful artistic atmosphere of authenticity. Neugebauer, directing her feature debut, is good at it; she has the instinct of a real filmmaker. Still, "Causeway" is both touching and a bit strenuous redemption drama. Just because your characters are hurting doesn't mean they have to stop talking.

Lawrence, returning to his indie roots, stars in a movie that will likely bring to mind "Winter's Bone (the 2010 drama that put her on the map), delivers a solid performance that is raw, straightforward, stripped of pretension. She makes Lynsey vulnerable and rather deadpan; we continue to study her makeup-free face for clues about what's going on inside. Lynsey gets a job cleaning pools, but she longs to return to the theater of war. From the moment she visits her neurologist, played by the always excellent Stephen McKinley Henderson , she talks about wanting to be redeployed. She wasn't in combat (she was a water engineer), but it strikes everyone she knows, as well as the public, as a terrible idea, considering all that she has been. Is it tenacity, stubbornness or is she trying to escape whatever what?

Shutting into a garage after her family's truck breaks down, Lynsey encounters James, a relaxed mechanic, who talks a little with her then offers to take her home. They chat a bit more, which is encouraging in a movie that doesn't value conversation. James, played with poky spontaneity by Brian Tyree Henry, is a comforting bear of a man with his own issues (he was in a bad car accident), and these two like to hang out. It looks like it could be a romance, until she crushes any thoughts in that direction - for James and for the public - by revealing she's gay. They become friends, but the dialogue, by co-writers Luke Goebel, Ottessa Moshfegh and Elizabeth Sanders, remains minimal. The two share some pretty big confessions but never just sit around and talk about…stuff. Any levity would dilute discouragement.

This will, to some, sound like I'm kidding. “Causeway” traces the healing of a soul, takes its time and allows actors as good as L...