The furthest thing from a genre movie is "Causeway," starring Jennifer Lawrence as a U.S. Army soldier who is recovering from physical, emotional, and spiritual wounds. But it fits into a category that I've started to consider a genre: the slow-burn non-verbal indie gloom fest.

I'm not trying to trivialize the situation when I say that. Lawrence plays Lynsey, a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers soldier who had a brain hemorrhage while traveling in a car that was struck by a bomb while she was deployed to Afghanistan. She begins the scene waiting in a wheelchair for the home health aide (Jayne Houdyshell), who will take care of her while she receives rehabilitation.

Lynsey tentatively begins to move, but she has trouble remembering things, taking a shower, and driving. She is a person in pieces because of the brain injury, which has broken and weakened her.

Lynsey is framed in sequences where she doesn't do or say much because she can't in order to create a sense of despondent reticence that is established by the director, Lila Neugebauer. But soon she begins to feel better. She develops stamina, the color returns to her face, and the movie shows us that despite being frazzled, her brain is still functioning normally.

Yet the feeling continues. (Her spirit is still shattered.) Lynsey is recovering in her mother's bedroom when Gloria (Linda Emond), her mother, enters the room in "Causeway," which is set in her hometown of New Orleans. This is Gloria's first encounter with Lynsey. They discuss her reason for arriving a few days early. And that concludes the conversation.