There’s usually a very important stepping stone a movie star makes: the small indie breakout performance. Jennifer Lawrence didn’t come fully formed with her Katniss bow & arrow. Her big breakout was this captivating little indie Winter’s Bone. After a decade of wowing audiences with her franchise carrying, Oscar worthy acting abilities, Lawrence decided to have a kid and get back to basics. Causeway reminds JLaw and her fans why she became such a star: mining and honing those talents in really interesting character dramas like this one.
Lawrence plays Lynsey, a very recently discharged soldier. She’s clearly going through severe physical and mental turmoil, through the quiet first 15 minutes setting up her slow but forward progress. After weeks of work, Lynsey journeys back to her home of New Orleans, living in her old house with her mom Gloria (Linda Emond). Unhappy returning to a place she enlisted out of, Lynsey gets a job cleaning pools and rehabbing to redeploy. On her first day, her car breaks down, and Lynsey takes the car to James’s (Brian Tyree Henry) autobody shop, where the pair strike up the early signs of a friendship.
After all that BIG acting Lawrence had to do for years, Causeway shows that she can still dial it back if she has to. Initially, she plays Lynsey as someone fundamentally broken: she can barely shake her head yes or no to answer someone. Little by little, Lawrence takes an empty vessel and adds pieces of a personality in: manner of speech, physical demeanor, etc. Not only that, she changes all of these things as the character’s confidence slowly grows. When looked at in full, it’s pretty incredible how naturalistically Lawrence progresses Lynsey from her “long stare” start to a functioning but still growing person. She did her homework, and really sinks her teeth into the role to make sure all of the choices she makes would fit the character she’s crafted.
Flanking Lawrence are two excellent performances as well, more than holding their own against the Oscar winner. Linda Emond does a great job playing a mom who doesn’t understand her child. She tries to be empathetic and supportive, but also gets frustrated when her daughter goes down a path she wouldn’t. Brian Tyree Henry is even better. Henry makes bad parts good, and good parts like James great: he and Lawrence do a wonderfully understated job of feeling each other out and building a friendship with a solid, honest foundation. With their painful pasts, that foundation is hard earned and built, with Henry and Lawrence both riveting the audience with a simple conversation over a beer at someone’s house.
Go big or go home, as the saying goes. Jennifer Lawrence went big, so now it’s time for her to go home. Home to those great acting performances so she can build herself back up into something big but different. I don’t know what the future has in store for JLaw, but Causeway gives me hope it’s gonna be something special. Maybe starring is Brian Tyree Henry’s Paper Boi Atlanta spinoff next? I’d see that.