She’s at the Toronto International Film Festival, the brilliant, the gifted, the gorgeous Jennifer Lawrence, aka JLaw. Massed in front of the Royal Alexandra Theater where his new film Causeway had its world premiere, the crowd chanted its name on Saturday. We loved her last year in the corrosive Don’t Look Upbut it was an ensemble film, and we hadn’t seen the blonde star wear a solo movie from the opulent spy flick Red Sparrow, in 2018. So here she is again not only as a headliner, but what’s more in an intimate project, of the kind that initially made her known. Unveiled in world premiere at TIFF, Causeway sees the star, and here producer, deliver one of her best performances.
First film by Lila Neugebauer, a well-respected Broadway director, Causeway tells the story of the difficult return to civilian life of Lindsay, a young veteran who suffered a major traumatic brain injury in Afghanistan. Yet all she thinks about is getting permission from a doctor to go back there. To James (Brian Tyree Henry, seen in Eternals), a mechanic with whom she develops a bond as unexpected as it is spontaneous, Lindsay says: “I prefer a hundred times better to go back there than to stay here. That’s how much I don’t want to be here. »
This “here” is in this case the house where she grew up with her brother, whose fate we will know late, and her mother, who still lives there and drinks there. The father ? We don’t say a word about it, and this silence, like many others in the film, speaks volumes.
“I love language, its infinite elasticity. But I’m also fascinated by those moments when you reach the limits of language; where it becomes inadequate. And what we have here, basically, are two characters struggling to better understand who they are, on the inside. Sometimes words fail them. I really liked this aspect of the story, and I wanted to translate it with care and respect”, explained Lila Neugebauer in this regard during an interview which will appear later this fall, ahead of the film’s release. .
A second nature
Precisely, and this is one of the many beautiful surprises of the film, Jennifer Lawrence inhabits all these silences with a quiet strength that never fails. Admittedly, there is the charisma, the magnetism of a Hollywood star, but it goes beyond that. Since his Oscar for Silver Linings Playbookshe has often been given roles that give pride of place to her talent for, sometimes, delivering an abundant dialogue with vivacity, passion and humor, sometimes, embodying imperturbable and more or less invincible (super) heroines.
However, in Causeway, the actress recalls how much restraint and interiority are second nature to her. After all, the film that revealed her in 2010 and earned her her first Oscar nomination, Winter’s Bonerelied entirely on this facet of his considerable talent.
Moreover, one does not fail to think of this remarkable film of Debra Granik in front of Causeway, and not only because of the game of Jennifer Lawrence. In fact, the second is an extension of the first. In Winter’s Bone, we followed Ree (Lawrence), a teenager from the mountainous region of the Orzaks desperately searching for her worthless missing father against a backdrop of rampant crime and a community that keeps its secrets. However, we will remember that all along, Ree had only one dream: to leave her remote corner and enlist in the army. At the beginning of CausewayLindsay comes back, hurt, but not broken.
In a way, Lila Neugebauer’s film could be the sequel to Winter’s Bone, a sequel set a few years after Ree’s wish was granted. For the cinephile, the return to the fold of Lindsay also gives the impression that his interpreter comes full circle. And that’s all the more moving.