Nobbs: Close but no cigar
Albert Nobbs 1/2 Starring: Glenn Close, Mia Wasikowska, and Jonathan Rhys Meyers Director: Rodrigo Garcia Classification: 14A Theatre: Metro Cinema at the Garneau Nobody talked much about sexual identity at the early part of the 19th century. People didn’t go into the local pub and have extended conversations about gender, stereotyping and self-perception.
Indeed, the language we now use to understand ourselves, and our place in the world, simply didn’t exist, leaving the ordinary and uneducated dumb in the face of dysfunction.
That said, meet Albert Nobbs, a frail, gnomelike figure trying to make his way in the cutthroat world of 19th-century Irish innkeeping.
A servant who’s been working the same job for close to three decades, Albert is what you might call a dumb waiter: Not only does this human passively wait for the world to unfold around him (in addition to actually waiting on guests), he can’t express himself in any functional way.
Albert is emotionally mute, verbally stunted and sexually ambiguous. He’s also considered a bit of a freak, but before we had words to describe and pigeonhole such human anomalies, people like him simply existed.
And they were tolerated — up to a point.
Lead actress Glenn Close dances a nimble gender jig on the head of a pin.
We wait for the outrage of discovery. From the moment we meet him, we see from tiny hands, girlish hips and Close’s name on the marquee that Albert is a woman.
Then we wait for the rest of Albert’s world to lift the veil. It takes a surprisingly long time for people to spot the ruse; modern viewers may deem this unfathomable.
After all, if the central hook of the movie depends on gender deception, one might want a more convincing man centre-frame.
Close — who was nominated for an Oscar for the role — doesn’t really come close to manly. But that’s where great acting saves the day, because, even if we don’t believe in his gender, we believe in Albert Nobbs — a muddled pool of oppressed sexuality.
We believe in Albert’s struggle to be who he is — enough to keep us engaged in the overall narrative, as it bounces from melodrama, to comedy of manners, to a modern examination of sexual identity.
That probably makes the plot sound more interesting than it actually is, because, on the surface, this movie can get a little dreary.
We enter the inn as Albert Nobbs zeros in on his dream of owning a tobacco store. He’s been saving money for years, and picked out the ideal downtown location. He could retire as his own boss, and end a life as a very odd little man.
Yet, just as Albert seems on the verge of possessing happiness for the first time, he falls in love with the wrong girl: an ambitious but apparently truehearted co-worker named Helen (Mia Wasikowska).
Helen thinks Albert is interesting and amusing and altogether odd, but she has no desire for him whatsoever. She wants to rock the bedposts with bad boy Joe (Aaron Johnson).
Just when Albert Nobbs starts to feel like a gratuitous melodrama with a gender gimmick, along comes the genius of Janet Mcteer.
The statuesque stage actress plays Hubert Page, professional painter. Channelling all the energy, charisma and estrogen-tainted testosterone of k.d. lang, Mcteer brings a believable masculinity to the fore, and convincingly blurs the boundary for the modern viewer.
As an assembly of performances, Albert Nobbs is altogether stellar, but the stars don’t equal a full constellation, leaving us with a cinematic “so what?”