This review gives away the ending, which partly illustrates the movie's problem.
Glenn Close plays a woman who has lived for thirty years as a man, the head steward at an upmarket Dublin hotel at the turn of the century when you could lose your (pathetic) job for having a stain on your tie. In that climate, having to disguise your gender is the least of your worries.
Albert Nobbs was abandoned as a child, then later gang-raped. This seems to support the characterisation of Albert as a severely introverted individual, terrified or unable to express any sort of feeling as she salts away her tip money under the floorboards in her room at the top of the stairs. Albert's dream is to buy a small shop, and as her target of £600 slowly gets nearer, she begins to fantasise about having a partner to share her new life with.
There are two candidates: Helen (Mia Wasikowska), the cute but flighty parlourmaid, and Hubert Page (Janet McTeer), a jobbing painter who reveals herself (thanks Janet!) to Albert as a fellow(?) transvestite. Hubert, however, is comfortable in her sexuality and has a partner Mary (Maria Doyle Kennedy, an excellent portrayal). Hubert and Mary's life is exactly what Albert wants: a small cottage business, and a mantlepiece with a pretty clock on it.
The Upstairs/Downstairs/Downton Abbey staging of the story is great; and you also begin by feeling a little admiration for Albert, who manages to both completely repress her misery and be extremely good at her job. Where her life - and the film - starts to unravel is when Albert is forced by the hotel proprietor (Pauline Collins giving it the full TV soap star treatment) to share her bed with Hubert when he/she has to stop overnight. When Hubert sees that Albert has breasts, Albert goes to pieces, begging Hubert not to give her away; and this doesn't ring true because the jump from severely repressed to gibbering wreck is simply instantaneous. Thirty years of self-control broken down by a flea in your corset? For whatever reason the feeling of a terrible secret about to be uncovered is not there - maybe it's because we already know Glenn Close isn't a man. There's not enough buildup, or maybe it's because Albert's grovelsome job is so boring we feel she'd be better off - or more interesting - out of it.
In a subplot which mistakenly becomes the main plot, Helen the maid gets pregnant by Joe (Aaron Johnson), the dishy 'young man about the hotel' who finesses his way into the job by luckily sorting out the plumbing. As he turns out to be a boozing rotter, he persuades Helen to 'walk out' with Albert in the hopes of getting expensive treats before he and Helen leave for America.
But by this time in the movie, Albert has completely stopped being interesting. What does the character want? Not to be lonely? This isn't shown well enough: Albert continues to go about her job as normal, and the story digresses into vignettes of all the other characters whose stories are actually a lot easier to empathise with.
When Hubert's partner Mary dies in a typhoid outbreak, Albert misguidedly proposes to move in with Hubert and live the dream. This shows that Albert has no understanding of a loving relationship, only a longing for one. Hubert is kind and sympathetic, and she and Albert wear a couple of Mary's handmade dresses to the beach for the day, but a relationship is out of the question, throwing Albert back on the two-timing Helen.
SPOILER
Fast-forward to the ending. Albert attempts to remonstrate with Joe when he starts beating Helen. He pushes her away, and when she then jumps on his back Albert is thrown hard against a wall, obviously concussed. Albert conveniently fails to lock her bedroom door, goes to bed and.... dies. Pauline Collins, going through Albert's meagre belongings, finds her account book in a scene worthy of a a bad pantomime. To wrap up - she uses the money to pay Hubert to redecorate the hotel, and in the last scene Hubert looks like she's going to take Helen and her baby under her wing. The question of when she tells Helen she's not a man is the same one that kept nagging at Albert when he first met the lesbian couple.
And that's the problem with the movie: it's an axiom of (mainstream) storywriting that the story is about the character who makes the greatest sacrifice. Hubert loses the partner who 'was her world', redeems the cute, misguided character, and unknowingly benefits from Albert's death. Albert doesn't sacrifice anything or redeem anyone, she just fails, fails again, and dies in a sad way. For Albert we feel sympathy, but for Hubert we feel much, much more. Albert is a supporting character in Hubert's movie, and for most of the movie Hubert is absent. It's as though 'Casablanca' had been called 'Sam the Pianist'.
The film is very good to look at and Close is very convincing, accent drift notwithstanding, but the screenplay falls into an elephant trap.
Glenn Close plays a woman who has lived for thirty years as a man, the head steward at an upmarket Dublin hotel at the turn of the century when you could lose your (pathetic) job for having a stain on your tie. In that climate, having to disguise your gender is the least of your worries.
Albert Nobbs was abandoned as a child, then later gang-raped. This seems to support the characterisation of Albert as a severely introverted individual, terrified or unable to express any sort of feeling as she salts away her tip money under the floorboards in her room at the top of the stairs. Albert's dream is to buy a small shop, and as her target of £600 slowly gets nearer, she begins to fantasise about having a partner to share her new life with.
There are two candidates: Helen (Mia Wasikowska), the cute but flighty parlourmaid, and Hubert Page (Janet McTeer), a jobbing painter who reveals herself (thanks Janet!) to Albert as a fellow(?) transvestite. Hubert, however, is comfortable in her sexuality and has a partner Mary (Maria Doyle Kennedy, an excellent portrayal). Hubert and Mary's life is exactly what Albert wants: a small cottage business, and a mantlepiece with a pretty clock on it.
The Upstairs/Downstairs/Downton Abbey staging of the story is great; and you also begin by feeling a little admiration for Albert, who manages to both completely repress her misery and be extremely good at her job. Where her life - and the film - starts to unravel is when Albert is forced by the hotel proprietor (Pauline Collins giving it the full TV soap star treatment) to share her bed with Hubert when he/she has to stop overnight. When Hubert sees that Albert has breasts, Albert goes to pieces, begging Hubert not to give her away; and this doesn't ring true because the jump from severely repressed to gibbering wreck is simply instantaneous. Thirty years of self-control broken down by a flea in your corset? For whatever reason the feeling of a terrible secret about to be uncovered is not there - maybe it's because we already know Glenn Close isn't a man. There's not enough buildup, or maybe it's because Albert's grovelsome job is so boring we feel she'd be better off - or more interesting - out of it.
In a subplot which mistakenly becomes the main plot, Helen the maid gets pregnant by Joe (Aaron Johnson), the dishy 'young man about the hotel' who finesses his way into the job by luckily sorting out the plumbing. As he turns out to be a boozing rotter, he persuades Helen to 'walk out' with Albert in the hopes of getting expensive treats before he and Helen leave for America.
But by this time in the movie, Albert has completely stopped being interesting. What does the character want? Not to be lonely? This isn't shown well enough: Albert continues to go about her job as normal, and the story digresses into vignettes of all the other characters whose stories are actually a lot easier to empathise with.
When Hubert's partner Mary dies in a typhoid outbreak, Albert misguidedly proposes to move in with Hubert and live the dream. This shows that Albert has no understanding of a loving relationship, only a longing for one. Hubert is kind and sympathetic, and she and Albert wear a couple of Mary's handmade dresses to the beach for the day, but a relationship is out of the question, throwing Albert back on the two-timing Helen.
SPOILER
Fast-forward to the ending. Albert attempts to remonstrate with Joe when he starts beating Helen. He pushes her away, and when she then jumps on his back Albert is thrown hard against a wall, obviously concussed. Albert conveniently fails to lock her bedroom door, goes to bed and.... dies. Pauline Collins, going through Albert's meagre belongings, finds her account book in a scene worthy of a a bad pantomime. To wrap up - she uses the money to pay Hubert to redecorate the hotel, and in the last scene Hubert looks like she's going to take Helen and her baby under her wing. The question of when she tells Helen she's not a man is the same one that kept nagging at Albert when he first met the lesbian couple.
And that's the problem with the movie: it's an axiom of (mainstream) storywriting that the story is about the character who makes the greatest sacrifice. Hubert loses the partner who 'was her world', redeems the cute, misguided character, and unknowingly benefits from Albert's death. Albert doesn't sacrifice anything or redeem anyone, she just fails, fails again, and dies in a sad way. For Albert we feel sympathy, but for Hubert we feel much, much more. Albert is a supporting character in Hubert's movie, and for most of the movie Hubert is absent. It's as though 'Casablanca' had been called 'Sam the Pianist'.
The film is very good to look at and Close is very convincing, accent drift notwithstanding, but the screenplay falls into an elephant trap.