Review

Review Date: 29-January-12
Spoiler Rating: High
Juju Judgment: Just OK

Albert Nobbs (2011)

Albert Nobbs is a frustrating film that points to themes worth considering rather than considering them itself. The passion project of actress Glenn Close, who stars in the title role, the movie takes place in 19th-century Dublin at a hotel that caters to aristocrats. Albert is a waiter of long standing at the establishment, a neat and taciturn man whom patrons and coworkers respect from a polite distance. He looks like he has no inner life or secrets, yet he hides the fact that he is a woman.

Albert's male exterior is not the product of a cunning or deceitful mind. In fact, he may not be mentally capable of cunning, although a viewer would be hard pressed to say what Albert really is other than an object held up for pity. A few awkward soliloquies and one painful reminiscence are not enough to make him come alive. What we do know is that he has been squirreling away his tips in the hopes of setting up a shop. After befriending another woman who lives as a man to the fullest, most uninhibited extent (Janet McTeer, a warming presence), Albert expands his dream to include someone to help him in his business, make his house a home, and keep him from feeling lonely. To this end he begins wooing a chambermaid (Mia Wasikowska) even though she has another suitor closer to her own age (Aaron Johnson, potent with angry-young-manhood). The uncharacteristically social aspect of Albert's dream sets him on the road to ruin.

The upshot of Albert's story seems to be that a person would be wise not to desire, especially to desire another person, unless she or he has the strength for such a gamble. This ties in with the concepts hovering in the movie's wings. The sexual element of gender-bending is lightly addressed, yet sex in general is treated as a dirty or dangerous act performed by rapists, selfish dandies, and reckless youth whose lives are about to get grim. The chambermaid's experience suggests that in the days before birth control, many women might have preferred life with another woman to the risks of unwed motherhood or having a baby every year until their bodies wore out. McTeer's character recalls that she ceased to be a woman the moment she lost the ability to bear children, which coincided with the last time a man beat her up. For those women who cast aside their feminine appearance and position, it is not enough to hide behind masculine trappings as Albert has done. They need to acquire new strength (to "be a man," as the saying goes). Poor shuttered-up Albert is not equipped to receive this intriguing message or even contemplate sex, so his movie lets these ideas go unexplored.

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