Richard Linklater's Where'd You Go, Bernadette (2019) opens on a simple question the title already asks: a mother has vanished just ahead of a family holiday to Antarctica, and her teenage daughter refuses to leave it at that.
What is Where'd You Go, Bernadette about?
Bernadette Fox used to be an architect. These days she is a recluse, keeping the world at arm's length and her own past work firmly behind her. A family trip to Antarctica is on the calendar when she goes missing without warning. Bee, her 15-year-old daughter, is not prepared to wait at home for news. Together with her father, Bernadette's husband, she sets out to trace where her mother went and, along the way, to understand who her mother was before she withdrew from everything. The film moves between comedy, family drama and a light mystery across its 109 minutes.
About the cast
Cate Blanchett leads a large ensemble that includes Emma Nelson, Billy Crudup, Kristen Wiig, Judy Greer and Laurence Fishburne, with Troian Bellisario and Jóhannes Haukur Jóhannesson also in the cast. Richard Linklater directs. It is an unusually deep bench for a story that is, at heart, about one household of three people.
Context & significance
Three genre labels are attached to this American production — drama, comedy and mystery — and the mix describes it fairly. The disappearance gives the plot its engine, but the search is less a detective story than a portrait of a creative person who stopped creating and of the family living around that silence. The premise turns on a profession, architecture, and on what happens to someone talented once the work is taken out of her life. Antarctica, the planned destination of the family trip, hangs over the story as the place everyone is supposed to be heading. Audience response has been moderate rather than rapturous, with the cast most often singled out. For Persian-speaking viewers the practical point is that a Persian-dubbed version is available, which makes it an easy choice for watching together as a family.
Watching Where'd You Go, Bernadette on Ktime
Where'd You Go, Bernadette is available on K-Time with a Persian dub. Anyone can read this page; to play the film you log in with a K-Time account. The service is built around Persian-language viewing for Iranians living abroad, and its menus and pages work fully in Farsi.