Where'd You Go, Bernadette? (2019) review

Architect Bernadette Fox (Cate Blanchett) hasn't been artistically active in decades and hooked on pills - after some failed projects that left her defeated - so her programmer husband Elgie (Billy Crudup) stages an intervention which backfires and causes her to flee.  This is an odd and somewhat dopey project for eternally humanistic Linklater - who dedicated it to his mother - that doesn't fully work (despite Blanchett ramping up the twitchy eccentricity): the insinuation that an artist not making art leads to a kind of personal crisis isn't totally out-there (Von Trier has suggested the same), but the idea that 'escaping' to Antarctica (of all places) is the balm that heals a fractured family is pretty daft.  Normally, Linklater has a very keen understanding of human psychology, but some of the actions taken in here strain plausibility; Blanchett is a wonderful actress - one of our best - but her character is annoyingly narcissistic, which could only mean that Crudup's Elgie is a very wealthy saint.