Albert Nobbs (2011)
Directed by Rodrigo Garcia
Story by Istvan Szabo, written by John Banville, George Moore and Glenn Close
Based on the short story The Singular Life of Albert Nobbs by George Moore
Albert Nobbs is a dull film and I can’t for the life of me even comprehend how I would review it without major plot spoilers. You’ve been warned, or hopefully, spared. Which sucks, because I liked the advertising campaign that riffed on Rene Magritte’s Golconda imagery, and had high hopes that Glenn Close would really tear through this thing. Oh well.
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| Pretty much me watching the thing... |
Glenn Close plays Albert Nobbs, a waiter at a hotel in Dublin at the turn of the twentieth century. Nobbs is a woman posing as a man in these circumstances, and why is pretty much alluded to by the screenplay as being a product of certain traumas and opportunity that occurred when Nobbs was much younger. Nobbs works undetected as a relative non-entity in the hotel, quiet and reserved almost to the point of annoyance. Just because the character is transgendered doesn’t make them engaging, sheesh. Anyway, Nobbs is thrilled to discover that a painter employed by the hotel, Hubert Page, is also a woman posing as a man. Page is boisterously played by Janet McTeer, and becomes some sort of a catalyst for Nobbs, who sees his loving relationship with a wife as aspirational. So, naturally, Nobbs looks towards PYT Helen Dawes, a maid at the hotel played by Mia Wasikowska, and fantasises about taking her as his wife and opening up a tobacconist. That also sells sweet meats (gross). Of course the arrival of the handsome and aggressive young Joe, Aaron Johnson (AKA Sam Taylor-Wood’s much younger husband) complicates this pipe dream somewhat when he takes on Helen as a bit of crumpet (the anachronism is somewhat apposite to this review). Sounds interesting right? WRONG. YAAAAAAAAAAAAWN.
Let’s begin by acknowledging this as a passion project for it’s lead Glenn Close, and one which she has harboured for approximately two decades since portraying the lead in a stage adaptation. Close co-wrote the screenplay, produced the film, and co-wrote the end-credits song sung by Sinead O-Connor. Because it’s set in Dublin. Also Albert Nobbs speaks with a cockney accent that borders on ridiculous. And holy geez, by the time the end credits dirge Lay Your Head Down (SPOILER ALERT! THE SONG TITLE IS OVERLY LITERAL because Nobbs dies after falling asleep with concussion, but not before dreaming of It’s-A-Wonderful-Afterlife) I wanted to tear up a picture of Close like it was the Pope… Which is saying something because I love her as an actress, Dangerous Liaisons (Stephen Frears, 1987) being a career highlight for me. Earlier roles and performances have been imbued with a tenacity and verve, as well as a sympathy. Close is usually such a layered performer that it hurts to see her phone in a performance so hard, especially in something she’s been fighting to make for so long. Woman was Cruella DeVille DAMN IT.
Admittedly, this most likely stems to the screenplay, which merely illustrates events chronologically rather than work to reveal complexities or conflicts that may resonate between scenes and hint at character arcs, and the non-committal and plain direction by Rodrigo Garcia (best known for episodically structured films that work around large female ensembles, like 9 Lives and Mother and Child).
Frustratingly, there is a central conflict and conceit to Albert Nobbs - chiefly the danger and anxiety and risk of posing as a man in this period, and the societal limitations for women that may inspire such drastic measures, as well as the myriad gender and sexual politics that would shade these implied subtexts to the narrative - that the film itself seems unwilling or uninterested in developing with any kind of potency, urgency or hell, even emotion. Instead the film quietly sets it’s protagonist off into the night as some kind of pariah, wiping it’s hands neatly off of any obligation to honour it's intriguing premise with any sort of narrative provocation.
Maybe the sheen on the project has dulled over the years of fighting, which kind of shows in the lead performance of Close. Fatigue must have set in for her to tip her mannerisms so far into the restrained and reserved that they fail to register at all. It’s admirable that she should manage to pursue Albert Nobbs to it’s fruition, but ultimately if this was going to be the blunted result of all this labouring it would have been better off left unfulfilled. Also, Close never quite convinces as male or female in the role? Which I guess was intentional? Ku….dos? I know David Stratton said she looks like Robin Williams in this movie (maybe in Bicentennial Man), and I kind of see this.
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| Getting that movie confused with the tagline for A.I: Artificial Intelligence, I know. |
Which isn’t to say that the film doesn’t have merits. Janet McTeer and the character of Hubert Page have far more material to work with, and it’s no surprise she blows Close out of her own spotlight. Her performance essays charm and swagger and confidence, that entirely reacts against the superficial cipher of Close’s Nobbs character. I haven’t in quite a while wished for a film to switch protagonists, but it’s clear a far more riveting and complex tale is to be told from Page’s perspective. McTeer, through voice projection and modulation alone, imbues trite line deliveries with revelations of her character’s past and intimations of her present idyll and happiness in her ‘unorthodox’ marriage. Close and her achieve a frisson of some kind of chemistry, but these scenes are bewilderingly few and far between. Am I wrong for wanting a tragedy along the lines of Boys Don’t Cry (Kimberley Pierce, 1999), only set in 1898? One with an informed and sympathetic queer voice directing it? Don’t kill off your protagonist and try to sell it to me as some kind of tragedy when there is nothing to invest in except for minor sympathy that they were a bit pitiable!
Such an inert passion project about a potentially intriguing queer topic nonetheless manages to become interesting as it hijacks itself with unintentional camp value (although I wouldn’t be expecting an Albert Nobbs float at the next Mardi Gras for fear of inciting toxic narcolepsy). Let’s start with the puntastic name. Let me tell you the restraint it took to not title this review Albert Knobs. Because that’s almost how literal the plotting and pacing of this film is.
Secondly, there is a hallucinatory scene where Hubert and Albert (God I’m only just realizing the names are strikingly familiar and that Albert means knob in slang…) run around in dresses, and what I guess is meant to illustrate the complications of the characters’ transgender perspectives instead becomes sabotaged by my mind’s eye wandering off to images of Matt Lucas and David Walliams as two drag queens on the beach in Little Britain.
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| 'But I'm a lady' indeed. |
Props where they’re deserved, the actresses look suitably uncomfortable in dresses, and probably not just because they’re hideous. The dresses, that is. I know of a cute anecdote about Glenn Close that doesn’t involve her looking after Christopher Walken’s cats (they’re neighbours), but refers to how she likes to keep one costume per character from every film she’s done. I wonder if this number was a keeper for her or whether she opted for one of those jaunty Bowler hatted tops and tails numbers Albert wears when courting Helen on afternoon walks… You know, the type of outfit Diane Keaton wears to the Oscars.
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| What ensemble would YOU keep? |
Speaking of costuming, Janet McTeer is dressed ridiculously as a man, with shoulders so broad they dwarf her head and Tobey-Maguire-as-douchey-emo-Peter-Parker-once-the-alien-symbiote-has-taken-over-in-Spiderman-3 haircut.
She looks like a linebacker (when Close is content to look more like a Pez Dispenser) and it’s really off-putting until you see her knockers and realize that they’re massive.
GIANT HOOTERS on a woman pretending to be a man. That’s the realism this film strives for, evidently. Good on it for trying though, because McTeer capably acts beyond the limitations her norks would otherwise have provided. Which begs the inevitable, yet obviously unanswered too-difficult question of ‘Why would a woman, in this era, think to pass off as a man if her boobs were thusly ample?’.
And yes, I realize I’ve used four alternative terms for breasts in a paragraph. Not bad.
So basically, in summary. (Al)BLERGH NO(bbs).
Nominated for three Academy Awards. Three more than Weekend (Andrew Haigh, 2011) was nominated for, because I expect this movie to be three times better at truthfully limning queer experience. DERP.
2.5/5
