Causeway Review

Bonding through trauma is a minefield of emotion for Causeway, a delicate feature from A24. It is not often that delicacy and sincerity meet within these projects, but Jennifer Lawrence is a commendable force for a feature this brutal. Intimate and well-observed reflections on PTSD and the alienation felt by those suffering from it and its consequences are key to Causeway. Brain injury woes are noted with a grace and sentimentality that manages to steer this Lila Neugebauer feature away from emotional manipulation. That is the key to any feature hoping for an audience to care for the unknown, and Lawrence is the perfect, recognisable star to portray a harrowing issue, told with relative simplicity.

Human struggle is a natural element to Causeway, something that Neugebauer does not take for granted. Her direction is filled with expression and immediate in its natural state. There is no major event, that has already happened. Causeway reflects on post-event living; how routine and fundamental it is that some form of balance and a grasp of connection to another can be a genuine help in the darkest of moments. In almost wordless, tender moments that are scattered throughout this feature, Lawrence showcases immediacy and complexity in her return to the big screen. Neugebauer deserves much of the credit for finding unique, ordinary moments, from being hired as a pool cleaner to a car breaking down. There is a closeness to those moments that is hard to look at as anything more than fundamental and coincidental necessities, but it is the worldbuilding that helps most of all.

Interactions with those in the area, the relative nobodies that come into any life, are hard to contend with. Causeway creates animosity out of the ordinary but even then finds respect in unmentioned places. Despite the weighty moments throughout, Causeway sticks around for just an hour and a half. Bryan Tyree Henry is a superb performer alongside Lawrence, as the pair coax great acting out of one another. Building on that is a pleasure to watch and gets to the core of friendships that appear out of the goodness shown to one another. There is some degree of redemption for the pair, lost souls hoping for something that won’t happen, but even then a level of hope is far more powerful than an acceptance of loss. It is why redeployment is always on the cards, but whether it is truly reachable as a goal for Lynsey (Lawrence) is another point entirely.

Causeway is slow and intimate at all the right moments, a pacing masterclass from Neugebauer, who rightly focuses on how fundamental changes to a routine way of life can cause a delay in anger or the repression of feeling. Neugebauer, Lawrence and Henry make for a delightful trio that riff off of one another with sincere ease. Reflective leading performances joined together by unity in isolation. Causeway is one feature that will drift into the larger pool of vaguely memorable feature films that have dramatics that can shake the right audience member to the core. It is far, far better than most of the A24 dreck, and a shame that it will not be pushed further than what the brand usually does.