Meet Bernadette Fox, a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown in Richard Linklater's "Where'd You Go, Bernadette." Once a brilliant architect, now a stay-at-home mom supported by her husband's tech-sector wealth, Bernadette has transformed a life of privilege into a psychological dungeon. Antisocial, insomniac and highly medicated, Bernadette is a shadow of her once-lively self _ a modern-day Doll of Silicon Valley, so to speak.
"I just need you to know how hard it is for me sometimes," she says to her wide-eyed tweener daughter, Bee. "The banality of life."
If Bernadette weren't played by the radiant, razor-sharp Cate Blanchett, we'd never put up with her, or this movie. Blanchett has long excelled at playing such fatally flawed diamonds _ a calculating lover in "Carol," a soul-sucking socialite in "Blue Jasmine" _ and her performance here is dependably terrific, a masterful blend of wrenching emotion and screwball comic timing. (Who else could make us laugh at Bernadette's attempt to con her pharmacist out of some Haldol?) Blanchett makes us feel compassion and pity for this well-dressed train wreck. The movie's mistake is that it asks us to adore her.
