Review: Where'd You Go, Bernadette
Sunday, August 18, 2019 at 6:00PM 
What if that one thing that you cared about and that you built your life’s work around was gutted away from you violently? Can you recover? How do you cope in the days and years that follow? These are some of the questions that Richard Linklater is trying to answer with his adaptation of the Maria Semple novel, Where’d You Go, Bernadette?
Bernadette (Cate Blanchett) is a harried mom (to Emma Nelson’s 15 year old Bee) and wife (to Billy Crudup’s Elgie) in Seattle. She spends her days in her big semi-rundown house trying to manage the small details of her family’s life, but mostly running away from facing the minutiae and drudgery of those tasks by composing long email and text messages to her virtual assistant Manjula. But Bernadette’s life wasn’t always so banal and she wasn’t in perpetual war with everyone she meets (Kristin Wiig plays her nemesis and next door neighbor). She used to be a genius architect with lots of promise until she suffered a major career setback that she couldn’t recover from.
If you are a fan of the novel you might not recognize what you liked about it from this adaptation...
Linklater smoothes over the singular and quirky tone of the novel. He’s more interested in the kernel of the ideas in the novel but not the whole. When the movie is following Bernadette’s professional heartbreak and its ramifications and how that affected her life, it’s stirring and heartfelt. However these central ideas get bogged down in the plot machinations of the Semple novel. The tension between the adaptation and the novel ultimately doesn't enhance the movie, and Semple’s social satire and comedy of manners among the Seattle private school mother set goes missing and never found, unlike Bernadette. Suffering most from this dissonance is Wiig's Audrey, I wish we got to see her sparr more with Bernadette.
What the adaptation opens up is Bernadette and Elgie’s marriage, exploring how a spouse can lose their partner and not afford them the support they need despite love and shared experiences. No wonder Bernadette runs away. Also affecting is the mother daughter relationship, and Blanchett and Nelson etch out a credible loving relationship. Watch them belt out Cyndi Lauper’s ‘Time After Time’ in an impromptu car karaoke session and see if you can keep your eyes from watering.
Blanchett remains best when playing unravelling women, however this is not a companion performance to her signature Oscar winning role in Blue Jasmine (2013) but rather I found myself thinking of another of her creations. The bored housewife who chooses to be kidnapped by bank robbers rather than continue filling her days with housework, in Bandits (2001). Bernadette is just as trapped as Kate Wheeler was and Blanchett manages to imbue her with the right chaotic temperenant to convey a woman confined by psychological trappings she can't begin to face, let alone conquer. She’s always been a master of gestural acting and here she plays up her facial expressions and gives her body movement a fussy restless energy to show us how Bernadette is longing for more.
The first half of the film is tighter and funnier. Linklater spends the second half trying to tie together the unruly plot and in the process diffuses the sharp edges of his protagonist. Despite that he manages to make Bernadette a profoundly touching experience in telling the story of a woman trying to find if there’s a second act to her life despite debilitating trauma. And who among us can't relate to that? B
Reader Comments (64)
From the women that are more mentioned in the comments i like more the work of Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore than Nicole Kidman and Cate Blanchett but i don´t like to dismisse the work of any of them, they are just evidently different each other and that is cool.
It would be more honest to say who you like best and why. I don´t understand the innecesary comparison between them.
@Murtada
I really like the review. I scanned down for the grade first, fearing the worst (given the general tenor of the reviews) and was surprised. I'm a fan of both Blanchett and Linklater, so I'm glad to hear some positive takes and look forward to seeing it myself. Your review convinces me to try and catch it in theatres.
@ this thread
The level of casual vitriol is startling, just gonna say.
this trailer looks abysmal and Cate looks cringeworthy in it. but really not my type of film at all I’ll pass
I dont think Cate does mimicry as good as I do, but she tries. Good for her
Filipe: i agree on Nicole Kidman, thats why she is always more of my fav than Cate
I hate Meryl Streep, both impersonator and real.
@Yavor
Lol!
So a talk show host decides to flatter one of his guests about the biggest movies they've ever been in, and this is supposed to be evidence that Blanchett gave the "star performance" in LOTR. That's so delusional! There are more than half a dozen performances people think about in the first trilogy before Blanchett even comes to mind (Viggo, Serkis, Mckellen, Bloom, Lee, Wood, Astin, Bean etc). Blanchett is somewhere just below Liv Tyler in terms of importance to the first trilogy. Not irrelevant, but only a Blanchett fanboy/girl would overstate her importance to those films or her performances in them. Galadriel is a plot device useful for exposition. If it makes you feel better to think she was best in show or she's even the 5th character that comes to mind with these films, that's up to you.
Her list of directors is very impressive.
@ QT
yeah, Carol, LOTR, Blue Jasmine, Elizabeth, The Talented Mr. Ripley "stink"
I think I'm the only commenter who actually saw the movie and I agree with this review. I think we expect Cate to be in these sweeping dramas or to give these tour-de-force performances every single time. This movie is light summer adult-oriented fare. Is it anyone's best work - no. The movie goes awry about 2/3 through, and there is a tone issue throughout. I actually think Blanchett is miscast, and they needed a lighter actress. But the movie is by no means terrible. Watch it on HBO in 3 months, or TBS in 5 years, and enjoy.
@QT Um.... No. That's quite simply laughable.
Is it?
LOTR - not the star
Ripley - not the star
Carol - terribly dull
Elizabeth - dated period piece
I could list many of her other terrible films but why bother.
@QT, you're clearly a troll and a baseline basic bitch of hater
personal opinion is one thing,
but when you have critical acclaim and/or box office success and/or Oscar recognition this means the movie has some merits even for people who don't like the particular director/cast.
Carol, LOTR, Blue Jasmine, Elizabeth, The Talented Mr. Ripley have all or some of that.
I was referring to your "her movies stink" comment, and now you're shifting the subject as it pleases you -> to whether or not she's a star in some of those movies = troll alert
very interesting article. Thank you for sharing this wonderful post!!!
The comments in this post are simply pathetic. Blanchett made a movie that flopped at the box office and automatically does that mean her career is over?
According to this logic can it be said that Kidman, Julianne Moore, Naomi Watts all have their careers in the end just because in recent years they had several flops?
Since Blue Jasmine she made Carol, Truth, Ocean's 8 and Thor Ragnarok which were box office hits and received her first Tony nomination, but because of ONE flop her career is over!
My Queen will for ever shine and do extraordinary work. Yes sometimes her movie stinks, but as she said years ago "you never plan to do stinkers"
I believe she said that after Carol and Truth she did not know how to go from there. After the trifecta of Blue Jasmine, Truth and Carol, she wanted some fun. Thor was the result of pleasing her kids and the clock movie to do some light comedy
Blanchett has already done sexy. The short called Red from 2017
I would like to see her team up with Luca. She was originally cast as Marianne Lane in A Bigger Splash but had to drop out due to scheduling conflict
And she also worked with Kubrick in Eyes Wide Shut https://www.indiewire.com/2019/06/stanley-kubrick-eyes-wide-shut-orgy-cate-blanchett-1202153715/