Where’d You Go, Bernadette

WHERE’D YOU GO, BERNADETTE My friend told me I shouldn’t say that Richard Linklater is one of my favorite directors because I’m not a big fan of his early work – “Slackers”, “Dazed and Confused”, “Waking Life”. While this is true, I am a big fan of “School of Rock”, The “Before Sunrise/Sunset/Midnight” Trilogy, “Boyhood” and now, “Where’d You Go, Bernadette” – so I guess in the future, I’ll preface by saying, he’s one of my favorites when his stuff is sentimental and dialogue heavy.

Bernadette Fox (Cate Blanchett) is a difficult, creatively frustrated misanthrope and former architect who won a MacArthur “genius” grant and then disappeared from public view. She and her Microsoft tech-guru husband, Elgin Branch (Billy Crudup) and 13-year-old daughter Bee (Emma Nelson), now live in Seattle in an abandoned mausoleum which once was a school for girls. It’s obvious Bernadette was inspired when buying the place, but somewhere along the way lost interest in restoring and making the building a show place, or even a proper home, so most of the rooms are beautiful decay.

Bee attends a pretentious middle school, and one of the bossy moms (Kristen Wiig) at the school is also a neighbor, who finds no charm in the Fox’s unkept property, nor does she or any of the other mothers feel warmly to the anti-social, acerbic Bernadette. This dislike, however, does not extend to Bee, she does well at the school, so well in fact, she’s been accepted into an even more prestigious boarding school for the coming year. Knowing she doesn’t have a lot more quality time left to spend with her parents, she convinces them to plan a family trip to Antarctica.

Bernadette and Bee are very close, more like friends than mother/daughter, so Bernadette doesn’t want to disappoint her by saying no; but the thought of everything involved in both planning and executing the trip, sets her anxieties into over-drive. She tries to combat some of it through long missives to a virtual assistant located in India; who is not just given a steady stream of tasks, but a complete run down of every thought in Bernadette’s constantly churning head – all via voice operated text and email (boy, do you feel sorry for that assistant!).

Unfortunately, this movie is not receiving a lot of love from the male critics, female critics seem to feel as I do that Cate Blanchett has once again managed to turn an unlikable character into a relatable heroine. I was completely absorbed; it’s my kinda flick – just slightly off-beat, female driven, dramedy, well more like medydra, with an interesting backdrop or setting.

One female critic who did give low marks to “Where’d You Go, Bernadette” was from the Seattle Times and a fan of Maria Semple’s book of the same name, which the movie is based upon. The book I understand, deals a lot more with Bernadette’s dislike for the city and finds humorous ways to criticize and point out Seattle’s foibles. Obviously, Linklater felt the movie would be more universal with that aspect toned down. Lucky for me, after the preview screening they were giving out copies of the book, so I look forward to seeing which I like better.

T&T the Large Association of Movie Blogs (aka the LAMb) rating 4.5 outta 5