Jennifer Lawrence with Causeway at the Rome Film Festival

Against the festival backdrop of the Auditorium Parco della Musica, Ennio Morricone is the moment Jennifer Lawrence returns to Causaway, which takes her almost back to her debut.

Among the Progressive cinema films, in competition at the Rome Film Fest, there is also Causeway, the film by Lilia Neugebauer, who is making her directorial debut. An intimate portrait of a female soldier who returns to her New Orleans to try to adjust to life after an accident while on a mission. The film, which sees the big return of Jennifer Lawrence, on the big screen will debut on Apple TV+ on November 4, 2022.

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In Causeway, Lawrence plays Lynsey, a young American soldier. Following the explosion of a bomb in her convoy in Afghanistan, Lynsey suffers a festive wound which leads her to stop and seek treatment in a specialized center. But when he returns to his hometown, New Orleans, another battle will have to be fought and it will be the one against his own demons that he had vaguely abandoned within the walls of his house where, awaiting his return, his mother is. , silent – during the plot – as an unreliable person.

Causeway: what pushes you to go far despite the danger

Jennyfer Lawrence in Causeway engages in simple, minimalist yet highly effective acting. She plays the role of Lynsey and the trace of constant pain on her face which, in Neugebauer’s film, is the thread on which the narrative rests. The camera never leaves the gaze of the actress except in very rare fragments of the film, framing the faces of others around the current life of the young ex-soldier. With Lynsey, we slowly explore how we deal with the psychological and physical trauma that soldiers report in wartime, but also the difficulties, misunderstandings and suffering that seem to have marked past lives. And if Lynsey decided to enlist and go to distant destinations, the primordial trauma, perhaps, is hidden within the very walls of the house.

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Jennifer Lawrence in Causeway: friendship and words are two pillars

The film – in competition at the Rome Film Fest 2022 – runs smoothly, full of silences backed by scene photography that pushes on cool colors. In the background, an unprecedented New Orleans which is the scene of two significant encounters. The story of a not simple, but tender friendship with James (Brian Tyree Henry) and the meeting in prison with his deaf-mute brother. Between the two there is a clarifying conversation through sign language, and it is here that the weight of the words acquires an important meaning and maintains this constant veil of silence that is perceived throughout the film. The desire to never use too many words – almost as if it were a necessity – is incisive in the sequence which sees the two young boys split by a glass.

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