Richard Linklater’s <em>Where’d You Go, Bernadette </em>Is a Gripping Mess
The film isn’t so much a mystery thriller as it is an imperfect drama about a woman mired in a creative crisis.
It’s not that hard to figure out where Bernadette went. If you’re walking into Richard Linklater’s new film, , expecting a Carmen Sandiego–style womanhunt, you might be disappointed. This is no globe-trotting mystery thriller, and Bernadette Fox (played by Cate Blanchett) would not make for a particularly elusive super-thief, despite her penchant for big sunglasses. No, there’s only one puzzle to be solved in Linklater’s adaptation of Maria Semple’s best-selling 2012 novel: What’s the with Bernadette? The answers are manifold, and the process of learning them is fitfully fascinating, even as the characters around this enigmatic woman suffer in her shadow.
