Based on the best-selling novel of the same name by Maria Semple, Where’d You Go, Bernadette is a story about a once renowned architect whose eccentricities have taken over her life. The film opens with a prologue in Antarctica that leads to the kitchen of Bernadette Branch’s ramshackle mansion, a convent that has been turned into a home, sitting atop a hill in Seattle. The roof is leaking while Bernadette (Cate Blanchett) flits about, moving stockpots to catch the drips. As the story unfolds, we learn that Bernadette’s house is not the only thing falling apart.
Going through a crisis of mind and muddled by the confines of suburban life, Bernadette disappears, and it is up to her gifted teen daughter (Emma Nelson), with the aid of Bernadette’s workaholic husband (Billy Crudup), to solve the mystery of where Bernadette really is—both in mind and body—and how to get her back to the person she once was.
With a screenplay cowritten by director Richard Linklater, Where’d You Go, Bernadette will appeal to fans of the best seller and those itching to take a leap of faith on an epic adventure of their own.
Reviewed by Rosemarie Leenerts, Library Assistant
