Review: Where'd You Go, Bernadette?

Image courtesy of Annapurna Pictures.

Richard Linklater's adaptation of Maria Semple's popular and uproarious 2012 novel "Where'd You Go, Bernadette?" is an enjoyable enough, albeit minor effort for the filmmaker. Whereas his 2014 masterpiece "Boyhood" featured a deeply satisfying - both emotionally and as a work of art - dramatic take on motherhood, his latest film takes a more comedic approach, but with somewhat mixed results.

Semple's novel took an often hilarious approach to the concept of a fed-up woman walking away from her life, escaping a community filled with nosy, snobby soccer moms and a husband who believed her angst over her lot in life to be overblown. The novel was mostly from the point of view of Bernadette's daughter, Bee, and was often in the form of emails, texts and newspaper clippings chronicling Bernadette's disappearance.

In Linklater's film, the story is told from Bernadette's point of view, which mostly works, although her character's enigmatic nature is slightly stripped away. It includes some of the novel's funnier elements - a mudslide that damages her annoying neighbor's (Kristen Wiig) home and a virtual assistant named Manjula whom Bernadette believes to be from India, although it turns out that the person with whom she is communicating has a more sinister persona and purpose - even if the film never quite commits to playing the story primarily for laughs.

Instead, the picture chronicles the coming apart of a family mostly due to its three members - Bernadette (Cate Blanchett), her husband Elgie (Billy Crudup) and Bee (Emma Nelson) - not properly communicating. The drama mostly centers around Elgie's concern that Bernadette is cracking up, although he later realizes that it's due to her losing her artistic drive.

Bernadette had previously been a whiz architect in Los Angeles, where she designed a property known as the "20-Mile Home" that was lauded for its originality. However, a mogul of some sort bought the property and destroyed it, and in the process killed Bernadette's desire to continue working in architecture. She and Elgie moved to Seattle, where the film is set, and Bernadette spends much of her time complaining about how much she hates the city.

A few dramatic run-ins with Wiig's obnoxious mother-next-door and her clique, which includes Soo-Lin (Zoe Chao), Elgie's new assistant, convince Bernadette's husband that his wife is in need of an intervention. He hires a doctor (Judy Greer) to help stage the intervention, which is also attended by an FBI agent who is investigating the mysterious Manjula. Without giving too much away, Bernadette's flight leads the family on a trip to Antarctica, which Bee wants to visit for a project she is working on at school.

While Semple's novel included some key plot elements that are not in the film - such as an affair that results in a pregnancy - Linklater's film is a little tidier, therefore making it a little easier to wrap up at the film's end. In other words, there's not quite as much at stake in the film, and there never appears to be any hint that all might not work out in the end.

So, while "Bernadette" isn't as good as Semple's novel, it's mostly enjoyable due to Blanchett's convincing portrayal of a woman who has been stifled and stuck in a rut and Linklater's breezy direction. It's a minor entry in the overall body of Linklater's work - which has been especially good in recent years with "Boyhood," "Before Midnight" and "Everybody Wants Some" - but still worth a watch.