Albert Nobbs, the character, is a woman pretending to
be a man in order to obtain better employment
opportunities and a higher status in Dublin in the
early 20th century. She works as a waiter/butler in a
comfortable hotel, a job that comes with a salary,
tips, and free room and board, allowing Albert to save
up nearly enough money to buy her own tobacco shop.
Albert is
one of those timid, deferential man-servants who
never speaks except when spoken to and even then
uses an emotionless voice to speak only the
minimum number of syllables necessary. That was
the personality that best served her job, of
course, but it was also optimal for her gender
impersonation because her complete self-control
prevented any hint of a feminine voice from
betraying her. After decades of playing the same
role, she became her character. Would Albert have
sported a different personality if she had lived a
happy life as Alberta? Would she have been a
vivacious, extroverted woman? Perhaps. We see her
transform briefly but quite dramatically in the
one scene where she tries on female clothing for a
walk on the beach. In the normal course of life,
however, Albert has done everything necessary to
assume the personality of a shy man of terse
phrases, and the years of doing so have made that
her "real" self.
The permanent role assumption affects her sexual
identity as well. Albert has been living in male
clothing for so long that she is no longer really
certain what kind of gender role to take in the
bedroom. She did not begin the disguise because she
was a lesbian, or because she took pleasure from
wearing male clothing, but simply as a matter of
necessity. She was a working-class orphan who was on
the streets at the age of 14. As a woman she was
subject to every kind of abuse imaginable, including
rape by lower-class thugs. As a man, she was not only
able to roam the city unmolested, but also found that
there were better opportunities in general. After
assuming a male identity for more than a quarter of a
century, however, she now finds herself possessing a
male sexual psychology to go with her wardrobe. She's
not attracted to men, and yearns for a life with a
beautiful young woman who works as a maid in the same
hotel.
Be careful what you pretend to
be ...
Glenn Close spends nearly the entire film playing
Albert in male clothing, and does so in such a
convincing manner that the audience can believe that
the other characters never suspected the truth. I
would not be surprised if she gets an Oscar nomination
because this is the kind of role that usually gets
recognized as great acting. Let's face it, people tend
to admire a performance in which the actor's real self
cannot be detected underneath a facade of
impersonation, and this one fits the bill.
Unfortunately, Glenn Close really had nothing to work
with in terms of developing a specific male
personality, because there is nothing special about
Albert. Albert Nobbs is successful as a man-servant
for the very reason that she is not a very interesting
film character - she has no personality. It makes no
difference that a woman is actually there because
there's no there there. Albert fades into the
background except when summoned by his superiors. He's
a generic factotum, like the fungible and sexless
butlers who are always present in every English
drawing-room drama to say "yes m'lud" and fetch tea.
Even when given the rare opportunity to behave
naturally among those aware of her secret, Albert has
nothing witty or intelligent to say, and merely reacts
laconically to what is around her. Glenn Close is
doubly to blame for Albert's complete lack of a
personality because she is credited not only as an
actress, but as one of the screenwriters as well.
Glenn did a great job as a generic male butler, but
there's nothing very interesting about a generic male
butler.
Moreover, Glenn's performance is only the second-best
in her own film. Janet McTeer plays another woman
passing as a man, and her performance is spectacular.
While Glenn Close pulls of her impersonation by
playing the asexual and obsequious sort of generic
male found in her profession, McTeer steers in another
direction. She is a sexy, huge (McTeer is 6'1")
working class guy! She's the Randall McMurphy of male
impersonators - charismatic, witty, lively, and highly
attractive to females when playing a male!
McTeer clearly deserves an Oscar nomination for
totally stealing a film from another probable Oscar
nominee. Ms. McTeer is making quite an improbable
comeback to film at age 50 by setting aside all her
dignified Masterpiece Theater demeanor to play
bad-asses. Earlier this year she stole another film as
a frightening but complicated hired assassin in Cat
Run.
Despite some impressive
period detail which evokes the best and worst aspects
of a bygone Dublin, and the estimable performances of
McTeer and Close, the film itself is a total
snooze-fest. Male or female, Albert is dim-witted and
pitiable, dull and humorless, and his/her dreams are
uninspiring. I could never bring myself to care about
the character in any way, and could muster up neither
enthusiasm for her aspirations nor sadness at her
ultimate fate. Moreover, all of the situations
surrounding him/her seem to be so generic that one is
left wondering whether the film is supposed to be a
drama or a sly parody of the seemingly endless string
of English/Irish period dramas from days gone by.
Frankly, I wish those days really had gone by and were
not revived by this film.
