From acclaimed Director Richard Linklater, and based on the New York Times best-selling novel by Maria Semple, Where’d You Go, Bernadette is a hopeful chase through the complicated world of the chic, genius, self-observer Bernadette Fox (Academy Award winner Cate Blanchett). An inspiring comedy about a loving Mom who becomes compelled to reconnect with her creative passion after years of sacrificing herself for her family. Bernadette’s leap of faith takes her on an epic adventure that jump starts her life and leads to her triumphant rediscovery.
A legend in the field of architecture, Bernadette enjoyed the notoriety of a creator’s life in Los Angeles, winner of a MacArthur Grant and one of the first women architects to be known as one of the greats — until she suddenly disappeared from the limelight without a trace. We meet her in Seattle, at Straight Gate, a beautiful old mess of a house, where Bernadette lives with her sharp, unique, and utterly charming daughter “Bee” (newcomer Emma Nelson) and Microsoft innovator husband Elgie (Billy Crudup). The house is a sprawling bohemian scene, bracketed by blackberry brambles, which acts as Bernadette’s physical guard against the outside world of Seattle mean Moms, judgmental neighbors, and the fact that her daughter plans to leave for boarding school in the fall.
Bee is the only light in Bernadette’s life, and the two are thick as thieves, a formidable wall of sarcasm, joy, and quirk that no one in their sprawling, quaint neighborhood seems to understand.
When Bernadette’s neighbor, and Queen-of-the-Mom-Brigade, Audrey (Kristen Wiig), demands that Bernadette clear the brambles because they’re out of control, it uproots a comically absurd series of mishaps — from a fake hit and run to a virtual assistant turned Russian crime syndicate to a full-on intervention — that changes Bernadette’s life as she knows it. As the brambles are bulldozed, so is the last of her capacity for existing in the monotonous world we all know so well.
Where’d You Go, Bernadette explores what happens when life challenges us to reconnect with what truly inspires us. Bernadette’s epic adventure takes her from her shelter and her home to the icy wide open spaces of Antarctica. And in finding herself, her family finds her — and discovers who she truly is. Can a woman who has stopped creating start to be inspired again?
Annapurna Pictures Presents A Color Force Production. A Detour Filmproduction. A Richard Linklater Film. Cate Blanchett, Billy Crudup, Kristen Wiig, Judy Greer and Laurence Fishburne. Casting by Vicky Boone. Costume Designer Kari Perkins. Music by Graham Reynolds. Edited by Sandra Adair, ACE. Production Designer Bruce Curtis. Director of Photography Shane Kelly. Executive Producers Megan Ellison, Jillian Longnecker, Maria Semple. Produced by Nina Jacobson, Brad Simpson, Ginger Sledge, p.g.a. Based on the Novel Written by Maria Semple. Screenplay by Richard Linklater & Holly Gent & Vince Palmo. Directed by Richard Linklater.
© 2019 ANNAPURNA PICTURES, LLC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. DISTRIBUTED THROUGH UNITED ARTISTS RELEASING
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ABOUT THE FILM
Maria Semple’s comedy adventure novel Where’d You Go, Bernadette debuted in 2012 and soon after climbed to the top of the New York Times best-seller list, where it stayed for over a year. Touching, heartwarming, hilarious and heart-racing, the world of the prickly and uniquely captivating creature that is Bernadette Fox was ripe for a big screen adaptation when Annapurna Pictures and Color Force acquired it in 2013.
A few years later, Richard Linklater and his team were brought on. The Oscar-nominated Director was immediately intrigued. “It’s a really complex portrait of a middle-aged woman who is kind of a genius but who isn’t practicing her art,” he says. “What that adds up to is kind of funny and a little scary. For anyone. It’s also a wonderfully complex portrait of a long-term relationship. Parenting, co-parenting, the ups and downs of that.”
“We were doing another film for Annapurna that we had been working on for about eight years called Everybody Wants Some!! and we were given this project to read,” says Producer Ginger Sledge, who has worked with Linklater on a number of films over the course of the past twenty years. “Everybody has such a funny, different perspective on it. I think it’s what’s so great about the film.”
“It’s such rich material,” says Linklater. “Such utterly complex and beautiful characters. Bernadette’s a fascinating person. A strong female obviously, but I think she speaks for so many people. I was most drawn to the notion of an artist or a creative person who for a variety of reasons isn’t creating.”
As a creator himself, Linklater could relate to the central, universal themes of the novel. “It hits on that kind of stagnant position in life that’s one of my biggest nightmares,” Linklater says. “Have you ever heard that statement: The most dangerous thing in the world is an artist out of work? There’s a good history of that. It’s a really sad place to be.”
Linklater also felt a personal connection to the character of Bernadette. “I think my mom is kind of a Bernadette,” he says, laughing. “She would leave the family for days at a time. Brilliant, but erratic a little bit. I felt I knew the character.”
Adding to the vibrancy of Bernadette’s world was Blanchett herself, who knew what she was signing up for when she took the title role. “The novel was absolutely thrilling, hilarious to read, but a bugger to adapt,” she says, laughing. “Structurally, it’s really difficult to translate to the screen. But I think at the heart it’s very much the same.”
“Rick really loves what an actor can bring to something,” Blanchett continues. “All of his films are about the combustible things that happen between people in life, and he has a very relaxed sense way of working, but he’s absolutely meticulous about the world in which he places characters, and he just wants to be able to bring them to life — and Maria Semple has written some really extraordinary characters.”