Causeway

In Lila Neugebauer's film Causeway, Oscar-winning actress Jennifer Lawrence plays Lynsey, a military engineer who has returned from Afghanistan with a debilitating brain injury after an IED explosion. It's a painful and slow recovery as she relearns to walk and re-trains her memory, aided by a chatty but tender caretaker (Jayne Houdyshell). But when she returns home to New Orleans she has to face memories even more aching and formative than those she had in service: a reckoning with her childhood. Staying with her mother (Linda Emond), with whom she shares a tense relationship, all Lynsey wants to do is return to her work as an engineer. Her doctor (Stephen McKinley Henderson) is wary, and so in the meantime, she gets a job cleaning pools. When her truck breaks down she meets James Aucoin (Brian Tyree Henry), who works at the auto repair shop and offers her a ride home. Slowly they start to rely on each other for company and solace. James, it turns out, is also suppressing his own past trauma.