USA TODAY International Edition
‘ Where’d You Go, Bernadette’ adaptable
Spoiler alert! What follows includes plot details from the book and movie “Where’d You Go, Bernadette.” Stop reading now if you don’t want to know.
At first blush, “Where’d You Go, Bernadette” seems unadaptable.
Maria Semple’s 2012 best- seller, which tells the story of a restless housewife named Bernadette Fox who vanishes before a family trip to Antarctica, is told almost entirely through emails, letters, legal documents and police reports, with occasional commentary from Bernadette’s 15- year- old daughter, Bee, the book’s narrator.
“The book doesn’t really lend itself to a film,” says Richard Linklater (“Boyhood,” the “Before” trilogy), who directs the long- gestating movie adaptation starring Cate Blanchett ( in theaters nationwide Friday). “It became a challenge of how to physically manifest a lot of that dialogue and find the right forum for it, but that was also the fun part.”
Fans of “Bernadette” will be delighted to know that the film is a faithful adaptation of the novel, which lovingly examines a mother- daughter relationship while spoofing stuffy suburban life.
But there were a few key changes made in the jump from page to screen.
Bernadette and Audrey’s unlikely friendship gets a new twist
For much of the novel, the reclusive Bernadette feuds with high- strung next- door neighbor and helicopter parent Audrey ( played by Kristen Wiig), who claims that Bernadette ran over her foot in a carpool line at their kids’ school. Tensions escalate when Bernadette erects a large “No trespassing” sign for “gnats” ( her term for annoying parents), which comes crashing into Audrey’s living room along with the entire hillside during a torrential rainstorm.
But Audrey has a change of heart midway through the book when she discovers that Bernadette’s husband, Elgie ( Bill Crudup), intends to have his wife committed to a mental institution because of her increasingly erratic behavior. Ashamed that her lies and exaggerations about Bernadette may have led to her being locked up, Audrey goes to Bernadette’s house and helps her escape out a window during a surprise intervention with Elgie and a psychiatrist, insisting that it’s the “Christian” thing to do.
In the movie, it’s Bernadette who flees to Audrey’s house asking for help, saying, “I know I’m not your friend, but I have nowhere else to go.” The two apologize and bond over motherhood, and Audrey drives Bernadette to the airport to make a break for it.
Linklater thought the slight shift in Bernadette’s getaway added an interesting wrinkle to their dynamic, while “not getting too far from the spirit of
their relationship in the book,” he says. They realize “they have so much more in common than they do different and are only a couple degrees off from each other, which is why their critical antenna is up for one another.”
Soo- Lin no longer has a baby ( or affair) with Elgie
A story line that’s omitted from the movie is Elgie’s one- night stand with Soo- Lin ( Zoe Chao), his assistant at Microsoft and a mom at Bee’s school. Their rendezvous results in Soo- Lin’s pregnancy, but her dreams of starting a new life with Elgie are dashed when he jets off to Antarctica to find Bernadette.
The cut was primarily “because of time and it seemed off from the core message” of the movie, Linklater says. “Bernadette ( sarcastically) calls SooLin his ‘ soon- to- be mistress,’ but that’s all. Nothing’s happened there yet, and by the end of the movie, we learn nothing’s going to.”
Bernadette’s disappearance is resolved much more quickly
Much of the book’s final third is streamlined to accommodate the movie’s 100- minute running time. Bee never goes to boarding school after Bernadette’s disappearance, and is more proactive in finding her. Rather than sulking for weeks and refusing to talk to her dad, she and Elgie board their cruise to Antarctica just a day or two after Bernadette vanishes.
“By the end, our goal was to unite this family at a new level,” Linklater says. “All three of them go through a lot and come to new realizations about themselves and each other.”
That’s true of Bernadette in particular. As in the novel, she feels reinvigorated by a temporary job opportunity in the South Pole as an architect, having abandoned her passion and thrown herself into motherhood following miscarriages and Bee’s traumatic birth.
“It’s about her getting back on track,” Linklater says. “Artists must express themselves – it’s their ultimate coping mechanism and therapy. When they’re not, that can really be unhealthy for them and the people around them.”