Film review

Rodrigo Garcia (2011)

Albert Nobbs has worked for twenty years as a waiter at Morrison’s Hotel in Dublin.  Under the uniform, Albert is a woman but no one has cottoned on.  It’s true that in the late nineteenth century, when the story is set, a person who wore trousers had to be a man.  (That must have remained so well into the next century:  watching The Naked Civil Servant, your immediate impression is that Quentin Crisp could pass for a woman then realise that, because he doesn’t wear a skirt, he can’t be, in the London of the inter-war years.)  It’s also true that Morrison’s Hotel looks to have a regular clientele who regard the staff as, at best, part of the furniture:  it might therefore seem plausible that the waiter’s secret isn’t suspected by the guests.  The problem is that Albert, as played by Glenn Close, is far from inconspicuous.  In the early scenes of Albert Nobbs, Close keeps her head down, often avoids eye contact, speaks quietly and briefly.  Yet she does all this with a distinctly histrionic idea of anonymity:  you can’t take your eyes off her trying not to be noticed.

It’s not surprising – getting this film made has been a lengthy labour of love for Close, who first played Albert Nobbs in an off-Broadway production in 1982.  As well as starring in the movie, she co-produced, shares with John Banville the credit for the screenplay (adapted from a novella by George Moore), and co-wrote with Brian Byrne a song called ‘Lay Your Head Down’, which Sinead O’Connor sings over the closing credits.  You sense throughout Close’s understandable desire to monumentalise the piece, now that it’s finally materialising on screen.  She gives the impression of having thought for so long how she’d play the role that she’s watching herself playing it – as she commands us to do.  Her acting is unignorable – every line reading, movement and gesture is meticulously prepared – but the showcasing largely eclipses the humanity of Albert, who is only occasionally touching.  The problem is not that Close doesn’t look like a man (although she doesn’t); it’s that she doesn’t convince as someone self-effacing.  With her staring pale face and eyes that never seem to blink, she’s remarkable; if she weren’t, you’d be less likely to notice that Albert, for such a slight fellow, has rather broad hips.  It could be argued that Close’s formidable control chimes with Albert’s careful, constricted way of life but I don’t buy this, especially in view of a technical weakness in the performance:  her accent is all over the place – sometimes cockney, sometimes RP English.  London-born Albert had a respectable upbringing then fell on hard times – but surely she would take care not to invite questions from the way that she speaks.

Albert’s life begins to change the night she has to share a bed with Hubert Page, a painter and decorator who’s doing some work at the hotel and needs to stay over.   Hubert discovers that Albert is a woman and, next day, reveals that she is too – pulling open a shirt to expose her breasts.  Janet McTeer’s playing of Hubert contrasts interestingly with Glenn Close’s portrait of Albert.  Over six feet tall, McTeer has the advantage of height of course but her voice is noticeably light-coloured and she doesn’t look fully masculine.  Yet she attacks the role with such verve that she gives Hubert a self-confidence that makes her genuinely charming – as a man, to the hotel proprietor Mrs Baker and, as a woman, to Cathleen, with whom Hubert shares her life.   When Albert visits the couple at home the sexual ambiguities are rich:  Hubert and Cathleen love each other as women but their domestic routines are those of man and wife. Bronagh Gallagher is excellent as Cathleen, who dies when a typhoid epidemic descends on Dublin.  Albert visits Hubert’s home again at this point and is shown Cathleen’s wardrobe – the camera cuts to Albert and Hubert emerging from the cottage wearing women’s clothes.  It’s a startling moment:  the effect isn’t much different from what it would be if two male actors in a film suddenly appeared in drag and makes you realise what Close and McTeer have built in their incarnations of Albert and Hubert.   The effect is largely ruined, however, by what follows.   The pair go for a walk along the sea shore.  Hubert continues to march butchly but Albert begins to run, exulting in the freedom of wearing a dress.  This is not only a cliched moment-of-liberation; it makes no sense in terms of what’s suggested about Albert’s character elsewhere in the movie.

Albert is remarkably incurious:  she looks astonished to hear Hubert’s life story but never asks, in spite of opportunities to do so, how Hubert managed to make it happen. When Cathleen dies, Albert suggests to Hubert they set up house and/or work together as if doing so were a simple practical matter without any sexual dimension.  Then, at Hubert’s suggestion, Albert turns her attentions to Helen (Mia Wasikowska), a pretty, flirty chambermaid at the hotel, and courts her cluelessly – Albert appears to expect that the intended result will be achieved simply by going through the social motions.  When Albert says to Helen, ‘Our wedding will be a great wonder’, she comes back smartly with, ‘Aye, it’ll be a wonder all right!’  I laughed at this point (for the only time in the movie) – from enjoyment of Mia Wasikowska’s wit and from relief that the words spring out naturally in a film where many of the readings sound too practised.  There’s a truthfulness about the moment – you get Helen’s irritation with how stupidly unrealistic Albert is being.  Although Wasikowska gives another fine performance, the relationship between Helen and a lad called Joe who works at Morrison’s is predictable and dull, and not only because Joe is played by Aaron Johnson.  There are some decent performances in the smaller roles – especially Brendan Gleeson as the doctor who’s a resident in the hotel and Brenda Fricker as the cook there – and Pauline Collins as Mrs Baker overdoes things less than usual.   Rodrigo Garcia’s realisation of everyday life in the hotel is weak, though; he sets things up too deliberately and you never get much sense of the flow of gossip which should be part of the lifeblood of the staff.  The sequences describing the outbreak of typhoid fever and the temporary closure of Morrison’s are lame and the conclusion to the film is overextended.

The mystery of who Albert has become, over the course of a lifetime of concealment, is at the heart of the story and while it may well be absorbing in the George Moore original it isn’t easy to dramatise satisfyingly.  When Albert dies and the doctor examines the body and discovers the truth, he murmurs something like ‘Why do people put up with such wretched lives?’  But we don’t know what Albert was missing in her life – she seems asexual so it’s not clear to what extent her decision to pretend to be a man thwarted her sexual appetites.  There’s no suggestion that Albert’s attracted to women until Hubert suggests that she take a wife.   We may be meant to see Albert as desperately lonely – trying to attach herself to anyone – but surely it’s not as simple as that.  During her years of service at the hotel, she’s put aside money which she wants to invest in a shop she means to buy.    Albert seems to be less anxious for companionship than for financial independence and respectability.  While the exploration of her personality is frustratingly shallow, the script seems anxious to supply a belt-and-braces motivation for her long-distant switch to transvestism:  not only does Albert need work which she wouldn’t have got as a woman; she also in her youth suffered some kind of traumatising sexual assault by a group of roughs.   Albert Nobbs’ themes seem daring but the filmmakers lose their nerve. Hubert – using a locution from decades into the future – tells Albert ‘You can be whoever you are’.  But Albert, when Hubert asks ‘What’s your real name?’, replies – in a quiet, puzzled tone –  ‘Albert’:  this indicates that I-am-what-I-am self-assertion is, in Albert’s case, going to be easier said than done.   The erosion of personality and desire is a challenging subject and Rodrigo Garcia and Glenn Close back off from it.  They keep trying to turn the movie into a heartbreaker of a more conventional kind – that moment on the beach is the clearest example of their approach to the material and Brian Byrne’s score is a persistent confirmation of it.   Albert Nobbs is too extraordinary an individual to be accommodated by this kind of treatment.

2 May 2012