Just in advance of the release of Carol on November 20, news of Cate Blanchett’s potential next film (well, technically, next, next, next, next, next film) has been announced. Something of a composite of traits we’ve seen in her biggest recent performances in Carol and her Oscar-winning role in Blue Jasmine, the film would see her playing someone who’s immensely rich — and perhaps equally discontent. (With neuroses that’d even top her Blue Jasmine characters’.)
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Blanchett’s in talks to star in Boyhood director Richard Linklater’s film adaptation of Maria Semple’s Where’d You Go, Bernadette? (Linklater is directing, with a script written by The Fault in Our Stars adaptors Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber.)
The original novel centers around a formerly influential architect — Bernadette — who promises her daughter a trip to Antarctica after she does well on her report card. (As the New York Times noted in its review, it’s hard not to do well in her privileged community in Seattle, where report cards are based on a system of “S for ‘Surpasses Excellence,’ A for ‘Achieves Excellence’ and W for ‘Working Towards Excellence.”) But Bernadette’s becoming increasingly spiteful of her new-ish Seattle life (she, her Microsoft-bigshot husband, and their daughter recently relocated from LA), and her neuroses about her current existence lead to some difficulty — namely, agoraphobia — delivering on her promise of a vacation. So much difficulty, it seems, that she simply disappears.