Where'd You Go, Bernadette Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		1.5
Overall		3.0

Where'd You Go, Bernadette Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman November 25, 2019

The term “curmudgeon” seems to be applied mostly to men for reasons some sociologist or language expert (presumably female) might be able to explain, but there’s a case to be made that Bernadette Fox (Cate Blanchett) is more than a bit curmudgeonly. Bernadette doesn’t suffer fools gladly, and she’s experiencing something of a midlife crisis one way or the other, but one of the things that seems to define Bernadette is her inability to forge really strong relationships outside of her immediate family, which includes her husband Elgin Branch (Billy Crudup), a big kahuna at Microsoft and TED Talk superstar (of course), and daughter Bee (Emma Nelson). In that regard, Bernadette might (emphasis on might) have been able to establish some kind of camaraderie with another woman “of a certain age” undergoing her own midlife trials and tribulations in a relatively recent film, Gloria Bell. The one salient difference between Bernadette and Gloria is that Gloria is a divorcée with adult children, while Bernadette is supposedly kinda sorta happily married with daughter Bee just on the cusp of attending boarding school in preparation for going to college. Otherwise, though, the films are at times surprisingly similar in detailing the emotions of women who have spent the majority of their lives “living for others”, ultimately setting out on a kind of quest to find themselves.

There are some hugely likable performances in Where’d You Go, Bernadette, but some kind of strange decisions have been made in adapting Maria Semple’s source novel, the first of which is the film’s (and book’s) title question is answered in the very first sequence. The novel was kind of an epistolary mystery, with daughter Bee trying to figure out what had in fact happened to her mother, who had more or less up and disappeared during a long simmering family dispute. Instead, the film lets the cat out of the bag, or the kayak out of the ocean liner (as the case may be), and then uses the hoary trope of a “5 weeks earlier” subtitle to go back and track events up to that starting point.

One of the other ways that co-writer and director Richard Linklater perhaps errs is, as ironic as it may sound, by making Bernadette way too sympathetic. Sure, she hates people, but she’s shown to be a more or less completely wonderful wife and (especially) mother, albeit a bit on the eccentric side. When neighbors and “adult mean girls” (whom Bernadette repeatedly refers to as gnats) Audrey (Kristen Wiig) and Soo-Lin (Zoë Chao) gang up on Bernadette for various reasons, it makes it easy to understand why Bernadette wants nothing to do with them. A whole plot arc with an unseen personal assistant named Manjula whom Bernadette is often dictating texts to (a kind of clunky if understandable artifice) also unfolds with an absolute lack of believability. Other elements, like a feud over encroaching blackberries between neighbors Audrey and Bernadette play out like something out of a Chuck Jones cartoon, again probably undercutting the aimed for emotional realism the film seems to ultimately be wanting.

There are a number of kind of odd elisions in the film that made me wonder if perhaps too much had been left on the cutting room floor. A series of cascading traumas ultimately makes Bernadette rely on Audrey, and suddenly those two just kind of magically turn into best friends with absolutely no (or at least very little) motivation. Another kind of odd moment comes when Bee (again unbelievably) “discovers” her mother’s kind of legendary past as an up and coming star in the architecture world, a scene which then segues weirdly to a moment between Bee and Elgin which starts with Bee asking “School?” out of nowhere, with no bridging dialogue (I actually rewound and replayed that segue with the timecode on to see if my disc had somehow skipped, which it hadn’t).

By the time Bernadette finds her “true calling” (again, it might be added) in Antartica, it all seems too preposterous to support anything resembling real human emotion. And yet once the family is reunited, there is an upswell of heart that the picture manages to convey, which in itself is testament to the performance acumen of Blanchett in particular. This is a rather odd film from Linklater, one that struggles to attain the same kind of freewheeling freshness that has informed some of his other works. That seems especially odd given what a free spirit Bernadette is.

Where'd You Go, Bernadette Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Where'd You Go, Bernadette is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment and Annapurna with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.85:1. This is another film of recent vintage which rather frustratingly has little technical data available online (that I could dredge up, anyway). This short but interesting article on cinematographer Shane F. Kelly includes a picture of what appears to be a digital camera, but I can't see any logo or identifying mark. That said, there's what I have to assume is digital grain applied here which to my eyes made some of the imagery appear almost dirty looking (especially in the snowbound scenes), with a kind of black mottling that simply didn't look organic to me. Other than that issue (which some of course may not find to be an issue at all), this is a nicely detailed outing that has some nice delineation of tones in the snowbound setting, but also in the grayer Seattle set sequences. Fine detail is often quite appealing, especially on things like some of the outré design elements in Bernadette's crumbling Seattle mansion, or things like the fabrics on costumes. As with most Fox Blu-ray releases, I noticed no compression anomalies.

Where'd You Go, Bernadette Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Where'd You Go, Bernadette features an intermittently immersive DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track. There's a nice swell of surround activity in the bookending sequences in the frigid waters of Antartica and torrential downpours in Seattle also provide good surround presence (an Atmos track might have helped establish more of a vertical presence for the downpours). A big (and pretty hokey) sequence involving a mudslide also has some fun sound effects that pan through the soundstage. Dialogue and an engaging score are both rendered cleanly and clearly throughout this problem free presentation.

Where'd You Go, Bernadette Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Bringing Bernadette to Life (1080p; 14:47) includes some engaging interview snippets with Cate Blanchett, while also covering a number of sidebars like the source novel and even some of the production design choices.


• Who Is Bernadette? (1080p; 4:57) is a short overview of the character.


• Gallery (1080p; 2:05) offers either a Manual Advance or an Auto Advance option. The timing is for the Auto Advance option.


• Theatrical Trailer (1080p; 2:29)

Additionally, a digital code is included.

Where'd You Go, Bernadette Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Where'd You Go, Bernadette has moments where it really connects, perhaps unexpectedly so, given some slapdash writing and editing, and an uncustomary lack of momentum from Richard Linklater. The film might have worked better had it hewed a bit more closely to the structure of the original novel, but one way or the other, the rather fascinating character of Bernadette never completely registers effectively here, despite valiant efforts from a really wonderful Cate Blanchett. A lot of this film is overly whimsical and even twee to the point that some may not be able to make it to the heartwarming finale. Technical merits are solid for those considering a purchase.