‘Causeway’ Film Review: A Subdued Jennifer Lawrence Shines in Intimate Drama
thewrap.comsomewhere to recuperate, Lindsay heads to her mother’s house in New Orleans, where mom has a boyfriend, uncertain hours and a taste for booze that her daughter doesn’t share.
Not suited to sitting at home, Lindsay gets a job cleaning pools, then befriends James (Henry), the owner of a car repair joint and a man whose marriage ended badly some years earlier.Their friendship grows slowly and moves with easy Crescent City rhythms.
Cinematographer Diego Garcia, whose resume ranges from Paul Dano’s exquisite “Wildlife” to Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s wildly different (and equally exquisite) “Cemetery of Splendour,” helps illuminate the places that make that town so special, from corner joints to mansions whose pools are often as not grand monuments to an elegance and affluence that has faded. “Causeway” feels like New Orleans, adopting the pace and energy of a deeply funky town that has almost (but not quite, dammit!) been battered into submission.
Lindsay is drained, and the film takes on her energy, too; nothing is rushed, nothing is overstated, and the presence of a big star in a movie that refuses to be big isn’t an oddity but a real pleasure.Both of the main characters get lengthy, quietly riveting monologues: Lindsay when she describes the attack that left her injured to her neurologist, James when he tells Lindsay of the auto accident that killed his young son.But for the most part, the conversations play out casually, with Lawrence and Henry never breaking a sweat (except the kind that everybody in New Orleans has) but never being less than wholly convincing.
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