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Jennifer Lawrence in her new beginning »Causeway«: unvarnished and approachable
Photo: Apple TV+
The biggest Hollywood stars sometimes come across as athletes with talented mimics: If you want to survive in the competitive world of comic blockbusters, you have to put in a lot of physical effort.
Women too, see Gal Gadot (Wonder Woman), Brie Larson (Captain Marvel), Scarlett Johansson (Black Widow).
Jennifer Lawrence could have gone down this path as well.
But she made a different choice.
In her new film, Causeway, she plays Lindsay, a former soldier dealing with the aftermath of a serious injury sustained while serving in Afghanistan.
The loudest action featured in this film is the sloshing waves of a swimming pool.
A quiet, touching, beautifully understated character study, "Causeway" is one of a breed of film that's becoming increasingly rare in theaters and is now available to stream on the Apple TV+ service.
»Causeway« is also the product of a conscious decision by its leading actress: no more loud commercial cinema, no more films that remained unsatisfactory for Lawrence himself and her audience.
She recently admitted to the New York Times that after the mega success with the science fiction franchise The Hunger Games, she felt more and more like a celebrity and less and less an actress: »I came cut off from my creativity.« She speaks with rare frankness about failed commercial products like the sci-fi drama »Passengers« and the thriller »Red Sparrow« and even says: »I let myself be kidnapped.«
After 2019, she took a break, married, started a family - and parted ways with the powerful acting agency CAA.
This is a radical step for a Hollywood star.
The agencies are there to land the most promising big films for their clients and to negotiate the best conditions for them.
But it was precisely this game that Lawrence no longer wanted to play.
She wanted to go back to making smaller, more personal films, like she did early in her career when she starred in the indie drama Winter's Bone.
The search for a home
Jennifer Lawrence turned the tide, »Causeway« is the result.
In fact, as a viewer you have to get used to seeing the actress without makeup and not the glamorous star at first.
The slight irritation makes it even clearer how rewarding and unusual is the path the 32-year-old has taken.
»Causeway« is about hurt souls, lives thrown out of control by trauma and, last but not least, the search for a home.
Lindsay, who suffered a severe brain injury in an explosion as a soldier, has to relearn everything in rehab at the beginning: speaking, walking, eating, brushing your teeth.
She fights her way through with discipline until she can be released to go home.
There, in New Orleans, she only wants one thing: to leave as soon as possible.
The viewer doesn't find out what happened to her family for a long time, and one of the strengths of the feature film debut of long-time theater veteran Lila Neugebauer is that it tells its story slowly and lets it unfold.
Lindsay meets James (Brian Tyree Henry), a car mechanic who is also burdened with a heavy burden.
A relationship develops between the two that can be something other than the typical romance: a tender friendship characterized by irritation and yet unspoken closeness.
Little "happens" in "Causeway," and that's a real boon given the many hectic, action-driven films and series from the US.
Neugebauer takes the time to watch her leading actress perform her art of acting, and she also captivates the viewer.
In the first third, Lawrence shows understated method acting when she shows the serious physical consequences of her injury for Lindsay.
Later, it is mainly miniatures of loneliness that make an impression: Lawrence often sits alone somewhere, shadows or shallow depth of field put her figure in the center of the pictures, she sadly stares into space.
Sound boring?
But it seems like a liberation from the compulsion to escalate and dramatize.
It's going to be dramatic, even if it's in the quietest possible way: In the most emotional scene of the whole film, not a word is spoken, sign language and facial expressions replace whole script pages full of dialogue.
Jennifer Lawrence is back, tiptoe.
Enjoy the silence.
