Causeway (noun): a raised way across wet ground or water.
And yes, I did have to Google what that word meant. After watching the entire film, I had no real idea of what the title represented. But in looking back, even if I had known the word prior to watching, its meaning in relation to the movie wouldn't have made a bit of sense until I was finished with it.
Lila Neugebauer's Causeway is about two people who just have their feet above the water line. One misstep and they could both go tumbling into the deep, but together, they balance each other out.
From the outside looking in, the premise of Causeway seems pretty straightforward: Lynsey (Jennifer Lawrence) suffers a traumatic brain injury while serving as an Army engineer in Afghanistan and returns home to New Orleans to recover, though when she returns, she ends up striking up an unlikely friendship with a car mechanic, James (Brian Tyree Henry), who has some trauma of his own.
Leaning more so into the dialogue and less into outside factors that distract, Causeway centers its audience right on the present in the same way that Lynsey has to focus on her recovery.
