Where’d You Go, Bernadette?

Richard Linklater – 2019 – USA

Where’d You Go, Bernadette? is what happens when a real filmmaker gets hold of a safe, studio property derived from a recent bestseller. Normally, journeyman directors are hired whose job it is to replicate these popular books scene for scene to cater to its existing fan base. They don’t really adapt the material for cinema. The results are usually sappy, estrogen-filled heart-warmers like Eat, Pray, Love and My Sister’s Keeper. In this case, though, the involvement of Linklater makes it a whole new enterprise, no different than when someone like Brian De Palma takes over a movie like Carrie (1976). Stephen King may have written a lot of good books, but most of the film adaptations are junk, except for when a real auteur takes charge of it; i.e. De Palma, Stanley Kubrick (The Shining) or David Cronenberg (The Dead Zone). Richard Linklater’s best films have always been his most personal ones, i.e. the ones he originates and writes himself, but when the elements are right, as in Where’d You Go, Bernadette?, the distinctions between the personal films and the commercial ones become less obvious. In fact, I would say this may be his best work in the “non-personal” category, because, more than ever, he’s able to bring forward the themes that resonate with him, especially the dual quests for artistic expression and enlightenment. Bernadette (Cate Blanchett) is a former architect who left a successful career behind to raise a family. An apparent mid-life crisis is causing her to behave increasingly anti-social lately, and it doesn’t take a psychiatrist to deduce that her angst is probably related to her suppressed creative impulses. How Bernadette goes about reconnecting with her destiny without turning her family into the bad guys makes up the bulk of the film. In the hands of most any other directors, it would become a shamelessly manipulative feel-good comedy-drama, or an all-out melodrama, but Linklater’s great gift for dramatic subtlety and his innate respect for people makes him steer clear of cliches and easy crowd-pleaser moments every step of the way. Note the way the ostensible “antagonists” in the story are not set up for punishments in the end but are absorbed into the warm acceptance of Bernadette’s goals, which are ultimately altruistic in return. I can’t speak to how similar to the novel the film is; I just know what Hollywood always turns movies like this into. That fate is avoided for this film because of Richard Linklater, pure and simple.