Details
Leads: Glenn Close, Mia Wasikowska, Aaron Johnson, Janet McTeer, Brendan Gleeson, Brenda Fricker
Director: Rodrigo Garcia
Genre: Drama
Language: English
Run-Time: 113 minutes
Rating: R for some sexuality, brief nudity and language
Short Description: Award-winning actress Glenn Close (Albert Nobbs) plays a woman passing as a man in order to work and survive in 19th century Ireland. Some thirty years after donning men's clothing, she finds herself trapped in a prison of her own making. Mia Wasikowska (Helen), Aaron Johnson (Joe) and Brendan Gleeson (Dr. Holloran) join a prestigious, international cast that includes Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Janet McTeer, Brenda Fricker and Pauline Collins.
SYNOPSIS:
Albert Nobbs (Glenn Close), is a reserved and punctilious butler with a secret, at 19th century Dublin's Morrison Hotel: 'he' is a woman who has had to dress and behave as a man all her life in order to escape a life of poverty. When the house painter Hubert Page (Janet McTeer) arrives at the hotel, Albert discovers Hubert's own secret and is inspired to try and escape the false life she has created for herself. She gathers her nerve to court Helen (Mia Wisakowska), a beautiful maid in whom she thinks she's found a soul-mate - but Helen's eye is on handsome, bad-boy Joe (Aaron Johnson), the new handy-man.
Review
By Colin Fraser
Glenn Close is Albert Nobbs, a turn-of-the-century English waiter. And not in a tempestuous Shakespearean girl-plays-boy kind of way, for Nobbs this gender displacement is a matter of survival. If you're an unmarried woman who doesn't want to end up in the workhouse, there's only one solution. Man up, wear a suit and get a job. Which is what Albert does. What's more, he has plans that involve buying a tobacconist shop and, rather more optimistically, getting married. Intrigued? One of the great delights of Rodrigo Garcia's mesmerising feature is the endlessly compelling questions it raises as the story unfolds.
An early contender for Best Actress Oscar (and possibly Best Picture), Close delivers a performance of a lifetime. More beast than beauty, she plays the buttoned-down Nobbs with such clarity that it's easy to forget there's an anxious woman inside his starched suit. Even when her cat is let out of the bag in a scene of alarming tenderness, Nobbs remains more man than woman.
If not one of choice exactly, her behaviour has become a lifestyle. Albert's carefully calculated life begins to unravel when he falls for a scheming kitchen maid (Mia Wasikowska). Her beau, a manipulative maintenance man, leverages the relationship and tragedy is not far behind.
Working from a thrilling script by Close and John Banville, Garcia explores a world on the brink of unimaginable social change. This is wonderfully reflected by the patrons of Nobb's hotel, notably bright young things led by Jonathan Rhys Myers, whose buoyant social behaviour is in stark contrast to that of their tutting elders. It's a delicious counterpoint to Nobbs own, extraordinarily modern, behaviour. The sad and painful difference is one of visibility. Yet there's a glimmer of hope in an unexpected friendship that is struck between Albert and a jobbing painter (Janet McTeer).
Albert Nobbs is a remarkable story that is dignified by bold direction and a riveting central performance by Close.
Further Information