Where’d You Go, Bernadette has me at a bit of an odds with myself. On the “oh my god can’t wait to see it” side of things is the fact that its a feel-good movie from Richard Linklater starring Cate Blanchett. I mean, that’s practically magic in a bottle. On the other hand it kind of looks incredibly trite. It’s based on a book, but that doesn’t mean it has any true depth, and judging from this newest trailer I’m not sure that it is doing anything to break the mold that has become a tired genre of privileged white people having the means to “find themselves.”
Now, I haven’t read the book so maybe there’s much more to it, and to pull Linklater in I would hope so. The director is one of my favorite working and he usually is able to pull out the beauty in even the most rote ideas (eg School of Rock). There’s nothing wrong with a film about a person finding themselves, but the genre has moved past things like Eat, Pray, Love and Garden State. Hopefully, Linklater and Blanchett can bring a new twist to it.
Where’d You Go, Bernadette opens wide on August 16, 2019.
