Nosh 164: 'Where'd You Go, Bernadette' & More

David Elliott

         

Flix Nosh is a personal movie menu, new each Friday.

APPETIZER (Review: Where’d You Go, Bernadette)

Note: Nosh 165 will appear on Friday, Sept. 6.

Where’d You Go, Bernadette

“The world is too much with us,” wrote Wordsworth, which is certainly true for Bernadette Fox, Seattle wife and mom in Where’d You Go, Bernadette. She is also too much for many people, being a control-freaky compulsive and a temperamental loner. Her obsession after four miscarriages is brainy teen daughter Bee, recently accepted at a prep school. Bee’s departure would leave mom more solo than ever, as her loving but heavily distracted husband Elgin is a Microsoft wiz. Elgin, though acted by very engaging Billy Crudup, seems a little macrosoft mentally. He reveals a new wonder ap that, when stuck to the forehead, can read your thoughts, not realizing (to giddy applause) that the cute little thing is a perfect gift for spooks, interrogators and brainwashers.

Bernadette, not always likeable, is the motor of this impish, well-designed comedy, and Cate Blanchett is inspired casting. With her hawk gaze and instant aura of authority, and an adopted American accent supported by her Aussie-Brit rhythmic fluency, Blanchett gives us a singular woman. She makes the backstory buzz: Bernadette the MacArthur “genius grant” winner, then an architectural visionary whose eco-smart design sets a bold new standard, until it is destroyed by a Trumpy vulgarian. Now she’s a martyr to motherhood, picks snarky fights with a neighbor (Kristen Wiig), and lives neurotically in a dumpy Victorian home. It would be a rank spoiler to reveal how she breaks out, though Laurence Fishburne (as her architectural mentor) gives the best advice: get back to serious, creative work.

Director Richard Linklater and his writers eliminated some bits of Maria Semple’s novel (such as Bernadette’s agoraphobia, and an office sex scandal). They have made a screwball comedy with zippy modern themes. At moments it feels as if The Fountainhead is wrestling with Nothing Sacred. Some of the family tensions are facile, some Seattle stuff is a tangent of Portlandia, but the use of Antarctica (yep, that’s right) is quite a capper. In a remote scientists’s lounge, amid epic white vistas, the signature cocktail is the “pink penguin.” This goofy but not airheaded movie hardly tops Linklater’s remarkable career, but it is a fine showcase for Blanchett, all spark and spit (hauling pieces of Blanche Du Bois through Woody Allen’s fragile Blue Jasmine, she was riding a streetcar named Derivation).  In the fine cast Emma Nelson is an excellent Bee, but Blanchett is in sure command. As her talent joins her brain for a true feminist revival, hoist a pink penguin.  

SALAD (A List)

Richard Linklater’s Dozen Best

By my taste, with main star and year:

1. Before Sunrise (Julie Delpy, Ethan Hawke 1995), 2. Before Sunset (Delpy/Hawke 2004), 3. Dazed and Confused (Matthew McConaughey 1993), 4. Boyhood (Ellar Coltrane 2014), 5. Me and Orson Welles (Christian McKay 2008), 6. School of Rock (Jack Black 2003), 7. Before Midnight (Delpy/Hawke 2013), 8. Slacker  (ensemble 1990), 9. The Newton Boys (Matthew McConaughey 1998), 10. Bernie (Jack Black 2011), 11. Where’d You Go, Bernadette (Cate Blanchett 2019), 12. Bad News Bears (Billy Bob Thornton 2005). Blithe experiment: Waking Life (animated ensemble, 2001).

WINE (Vin Orsonaire de Chateau Welles)

For his farce Too Much Johnson in 1938, Orson Welles chose to make a silent slapstick film for insertion into the stage action, flirting with a medium he would soon command. The stock was easily flammable nitrate, and colleague John Berry recalled that “one time the film caught fire. What I remember most remarkably is me running with the projector in my hand, burning, trying to get out the door into the hallway, and John Houseman racing for the door at the same time – so we had one of those comic who-gets-out-first moments … While Orson, with absolutely no concern whatsoever, was back inside, standing and looking at some piece of film in his hand, smoking his pipe.” (Quote from Patrick McGilligan’s Young Orson: The Years of Luck and Genius on the Path to Citizen Kane.)

ENTRÉE (Starlight Rising)

“Stars often define their context. Buster Keaton rules any comical space he enters, and Kim Novak fulfills the Golden Gate in Vertigo. Stars also surprise, like Martin Landau as Bela Lugosi, giving depth to campy Ed Wood. They can even invade sleep, as in Mac, when John Turturro is startled from his nap by Burt Lancaster on TV in From Here to Eternity. Eyes widening, Mac declares ‘Get him, Burt! Get that Fatso! That’s Burt, Burt Lancaster!’ – and then smiles back into slumber.” (From the Introduction in my book Starlight Rising, available from Amazon, Nook and Kindle.)

DESSERT (An Image)

A fine movie image is more than a still, it’s a distillation.

As Bela Lugosi, Martin Landau (in white coat) becomes the crazed soul of pulp-camp cinema in Ed Wood, and won an Oscar for it (Buena Vista Pictures 1994; director Tim Burton, d.p. Stefan Czapsky).

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