Jennifer Lawrence On How ‘Causeway’ Was “Extremely Personal” [Video] – Deadline

Jennifer Lawrence returns to awards season with the character-driven A24 feature, Causeway, in which she plays, Lynsey, an Afghanistan war vet who is suffering from body and brain injuries.

Deadline critic Pete Hammond beamed out of TIFF, “It is a pleasure to see this immensely talented star take it down a few notches and throw herself into an understated portrayal of a woman who is not only suffering from the effects of physical wounds, but more deeply the unseen wounds inside that have had devastating effects on her ability to live a normal life.”

When it comes to Lawrence’s nuanced performance, many are drawing parallels to Winter’s Bone, the actress’ first Oscar-nominated dramatic breakout film.

In the movie, which is set in New Orleans, Lynsey forms an unlikely friendship with a mechanic named James (Brian Tyree Henry) as he too has his own handicaps, that being a lost leg and the death of a nephew from a car accident. Lynsey lives with her mother, who isn’t very sympathetic to her daughter’s need for re-direction in a life devastated by her wartime experience.

“The film was extremely personal to me,” Lawrence told us in the Deadline TIFF studio, “there were things I identified with that I connected to.”

“That feeling not knowing where home is, not knowing if you find it, if you can keep it, just assuming you can f*** it up,” the Oscar winning actress told us.

The screenplay is by novelist Ottessa Moshfegh, Luke Goebel and Elizabeth Sanders and reps Lila Neugebauer’s feature directorial debut.

The title is named after the 24 mile bridge which stretches over Lake Pontchartrain, going from Metaire to Mandeville Louisiana.

“It’s the site of an an accident prior to the film’s events; that journey across the bridge struck me as an apt metaphor for a number of journeys in the film,” Neugebauer tells us.

“It’s terrifying to drive across when you’re on it,” the filmmaker emphasizes, “you can’t see”

Henry says, “You meet these two characters who are trying to navigate their way through their own personal traumas. Some have been entrenched in their traumas a little longer than the other. Both people who’ve been labeled as disabled in their own way. I think that is something that this movie tries to explore, is that trauma can feel like a disability and what it means to unveil these disabilities that we try so hard to cover in our lives.”

Causeway has not been dated theatrically yet.

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