A bizarre little film about Albert Nobbs (Glenn Close) as a woman pretending to be a man in order to work as a butler… 19th century Ireland. … But no sooner Nobbs settles into this life of loneliness, she finds herself internally trapped after falling for a young lover, the very saucy maid, Helen Dawes (Mia Wasikowska.)
“Such a sweet little man,” says someone at the hotel where Albert Nobbs waits tables. “Sweet” is far from the adjective the audience might use in defining this earnest, elfin human, who while sympathetic, is at the same time robotic and contained.
Only one person learns of Nobbs’s secrets, and that’s Mr Page (Janet McTeer) with his/her own set of secrets. Page will eventually mentors Albert.
Jonathan Rhys-Meyers takes a small part outside of his usual “The Tutors” royalty – but not too far – as he still portrays an aristocrat who comes and goes from the hotel bedrooms.
Apparently Glenn Close played this role on the stage some thirty years ago and has been trying to bring it to the big screen ever since. It would make sense that with a story immersed in levels of love, loss, secrets and a hunger for safety vs. nurturing, that Close would end up with Rodrigo Garcia famous for the Annette Benning film Mother and Child.
Close gives a Charlie Chaplin-esque performance always staying within the boundaries of being discovered for her sexuality at any given moment. But oddly while the films’ message seems to be the business arrangement of marriage over love, sincerity in place of lies, it’s hard to take Nobbs seriously when his soul represents the truth but his physical self is caught in the biggest fib of all. Two tiaras