Albert Nobbs

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Glenn Close as Albert in Albert Nobbs
Albert Nobbs has been Glenn Close’s passionproject since she performed the title role in Simone Benmussa’s play, The Singular Life of Albert Nobbs, in NewYork in 1982.  Her commitment pays off ina beautiful, starring performance in the film she co-wrote and co-produced.  With her small eyes peering out of Albert’sguarded face, Close demonstrates her sensitivity to the emotional nuances ofbeing a woman in the late 1800s Dublin who spends her life living as a man.
Albert Nobbsis based on a novella by the Irish author George Moore.  Moore makes a brief appearance as a character inthe film as a guest at Morrison’s hotel, where Nobbs works as a waiter for thepreemptory, social-climbing proprietor, Mrs. Baker (Pauline Collins).  In Benmussa’s play, Moore narrated Albert’sstory, providing a critical frame that guided spectators’ understanding of thecompromises Albert had made to enable his own survival.
Here, what we learn of Albert’s past and thereasons for his life-long masquerade as a man come from stories Albert shareswith Hubert Page (Janet McTeer).  Page isa housepainter with a similar life, with whom Albert is forced to share his bedfor a night at the hotel.  When abothersome flea forces Albert to strip off his clothes, he inadvertently revealshis female body to Page.
McTeer as the strapping housepainter, Hubert Page
Fearful and humiliated by this exposure, thehorrified Albert begs Page repeatedly through the night and the next day not to reveal the truth. WhenAlbert’s whining becomes bothersome, Page puts down his paint brush, closes thedoor, and exposes his breasts to Albert, shocking him to his core.  Albert is incredulous to have met someonelike him, who carries such a deep and abiding secret.  But the two passing women don’t fully sharetheir stories until Albert seeks out Page and his wife, Cathleen, at the flatthey share in the city.
Hubert Page, it turns out, fled an abusivemarriage by stealing her husband’s clothes and his occupation, reinventingherself as a male house painter to make her way in the world.  She meets Cathleen (Bronagh Gallagher), another woman livingalone, and they share a home until people’s gossip forces them to marry.  When Albert visits their cozy flat, it’sclear that Hubert and Cathleen have made a full and rich life together.  Their physical and emotional intimacy iscompelling and mysterious to Albert, who can’t quite contemplate a life beyondthe structured, impersonal, servile routine to which he’s disciplined himselfat Morrison’s.
With Page’s encouragement, Albert begins to dreamabout opening a tobacco shop finding a companion of his own.  But Albert has lived unemotionally andimpassively for so long, he has no idea how to court a woman or really how tointeract in more than a professional manner with anyone at all.
In fact, when Page asks the waiter his name, Albertresponds, “Albert.”  Page clarifies, “No,your real name.”  After a beat and aswallow, Albert says again, “Albert.” The wrenching moment underlines their differences.  Page has recreated himself but kept hisspirit intact.  Albert has become thesurface of his masquerade and can no longer fathom his own depths.
The film, directed by Rodrigo Garcia, provides Albert’scross-dressed existence with a justification different from Benmussa’sadaptation.  Albert haltingly tells Pagethat he was raised by a foster mother, whose financial circumstances soured,forcing them to mingle with a rougher crowd than those to which Albert wasaccustomed.  He relates that as a younggirl, he was assaulted by a gang of boys, and soon after, began passing as amale waiter.  The film implies thatsexual violence turned Albert toward the gender impersonation that became hislife.
By contrast, Benmussa adapted Moore’s story todemonstrate the economic forces that would compel a woman to pass as aman.  In her Brechtian, non-realist andnon-psychologized play, Albert’s desperate need for economic survival explainshis male attire and his single-minded devotion to counting his tips. Heorganizes all of his relationships according to financial necessity.
Close’s film, too, captures some of Albert’sScrooge-like attachment to his coins, which he fingers luxuriously, recordsprecisely in his journal, and buries under a floorboard in his room at thehotel.  When he courts Helen Dawes (MiaWasikowska), a chambermaid at Morrison’s, he sees her as a partner for his businessendeavor and little more, because he can’t conceive of a relationship that isn’tdriven by the cold imperative of cash.  Butthat story about sexual violence makes him seem more a broken soul than someonewily enough to pass as a man to make his way.
Nonetheless, the film is a fine demonstration ofgender as performance.  At a masqueradeball at Morrison’s, to which only the hotel’s guests are invited to wearcostumes, the inebriated Dr. Holloran (Brendan Gleeson), who lives among the staff,asks Albert what he’s dressed as.  Confused,Albert responds, “I’m a waiter, sir,” to which the doctor replies, “And I am adoctor.  We’re both disguised asourselves.”  The doctor has no idea howdescriptive he’s been.  He finally uncoversAlbert’s truth when the waiter dies from a blow to his head, suffered during analtercation with Joe Mackins (Aaron Johnson), the young man with whom he viesfor Helen Dawe’s affections.
Joe Mackins (Johnson) and Helen Dawes (Wasikowska)
Mackins provides the masculine sexual energy of Albert Nobbs, and proves the only one atMorrison’s who sniffs something off about Albert.  He tells Helen that Albert smells of money,but he intuits Albert’s lack of desire and his passion only for his cash.  Though the illiterate laborer can’tarticulate the problem, Joe is the only one who sees through Albert’scharade.  That is, all except anodd-looking, nameless young boy, a guest of the hotel who stares at Albertwordlessly, and later looks at Hubert Page with the same unsettling,inarticulate knowingness.
The boy who somehow fathoms the secret of Albert and Hubert
But the mores of late-1800s Dublin are soconstrained that none of the others would ever suspect that a person who lookslike a man in fact is not.  For instance,when Cathleen dies of typhoid fever, Albert and Hubert venture out costumed aswomen, wearing the dresses that Cathleen made as a kind of tribute to her life.  In their experiment with nostalgia, they lookawkward and ridiculous.  Page’s dress istoo small for the tall and bulky guy; his long arms stick out of the sleevesand the dress fails to conceal his painters’ boots, in which he lumbers alongthe Dublin streets.  In his bonnet and skirt,Albert, too, looks silly and strange.
But a man passing them in the lane tips his hat toHubert and Albert anyway, reading femininity from their dresses regardless oftheir inadequate gender performances.  AsJudith Butler would argue, the surface enactment is enough to signal gender, whichfor Hubert and Albert, if not for all of us, has no depth anyway.  Watching the film, I had so accustomed myselfto Albert and Hubert’s utterly persuasive gender performances that despite whatI knew, their outing as women seemed sad and pathetic.
This moment of female impersonation wasn’t part ofBenmussa’s play, and makes an uneasy addition to the story.  Close plays Albert in that scene as entrancedwith his feminine attire, despite his clumsiness with its draping.  Albert and Page walk on the beach in theirwomen’s wear, and Albert suddenly seems to feel free.  His bonnet falls onto his back and he runsahead of Page, arms stretched out, catching the wind in his hair.
Page looks on, amused.  For him, femininity has long lost its interestor its necessity.  His grief over Cathleen’sdeath means his feminine impersonation is more about wearing things she touchedthan remembering his long-cast-off womanhood. After their brief beach venture, both men return to their workers’clothing, resuming the costumes of lives they can’t be without.
Albert Nobbs (Close) and Hubert Page (McTeer)
Close and McTeer are utterly affecting in theirperformance of the men’s halting friendship. Albert can barely express himself; throughout the film, he casts hisgaze down or away, rarely making eye contact. Watching Close slowly move Albert’s eyes to meet Hubert’s is a study incourage and need.  And yet what we see isthe shadow of a man, whose excitement is kindled not by emotional connectionbut by the possibility of rearranging her living situation to improve hereconomics.
Cathleen’s death provides an opportunity forAlbert.  He suggests that he replace Cathleenin Hubert’s home, so that they can keep their expenses low and livereasonably.  Hubert protests, “But Iloved her,” an emotion unintelligible to Albert.
Likewise, when he courts Helen Dawes, she’sfrustrated and insulted that Albert plans to marry her without even venturingto kiss her.  Startled by her complaint,Albert obliges by pecking her cheek, sending Helen running back to the virileif corrupt Joe Mackins.
The wrong kind of kiss . . .
Albert, in other words, is a bit of a fool atMorrison’s.  When he’s not working, hesits on the landing between floors, looking up and down, scheming about hisfuture and making notes about his money. Benmussa’s dialogue notes that Albert is neither up nor down, neitherhere nor there, a physical representation of his refusal to inhabit binarygender categories.   Close sits on thelanding in the film, too, but without the critical comment of the play, heseems simply strange.
The film, however, can paint the lives aroundAlbert with richer contrasting detail.  JonathanRhys Meyers plays a viscount who arrives at Morrison’s with an entourage offriends and women to drink and have sex. Mrs. Baker enables their assignations, and their unfettered heterosexualenergy permeates the place.  Even Mrs.Baker flirts with the doctor shamelessly, though he’s having an affair withanother of the chambermaids.
Only Albert has no place in the hotel’s network ofsexual intrigue.  When Helen findsherself pregnant and she and Joe fight about their future, Albert tries torescue her by offering to take care of her and the child.  For his chivalry, Joe pushes him violentlyand he falls into the hallway wall, giving Albert the head injury that killshim.  He dies alone, his money buriedunder his floor, where Mrs. Baker finds it and uses it to employ Hubert topaint her entire hotel.
The doctor who finds Albert shakes his head overthe miserable circumstances in which people live.  Albert’s death inspires him to change his ownlife; he runs off with his chambermaid and leaves Morrison’s Hotel.  Helen has her baby, which she namesAlbert.  And Hubert paints the hotelwhere his friend died, carrying with him the secret of Hubert’s sex and his own.
The film is smart and sweet, sad and atmospheric.  If it doesn’t pack quite the intellectual andpolitical punch of Benmussa’s play, at least Albert Nobbs lets us watch Close and McTeer in performances thatshould compel conversation about what it means to inhabit the strictures of gender.  The difference between Close as, for only oneexample, Patty Hewes in her starring television role on Damages, in which she plays a female lawyer as manipulative shark,and Close as Albert, in his furtive, rigid performance of masculinity, tells usa lot not just about Close’s talent as an actor, but about how masculinity andfemininity are always just constructions.
Close and McTeer, out of costume and makeup
McTeer and Close, buddies
On the other hand, the film’s most wrenchingmoment is when Albert rips open her shirt to scratch that flea and reveals herbreasts encased in a girdle.  The wayClose gathers her shirt and her covers her breasts, as if she’s trying to makethem and herself disappear, illustrates her painful body shame.  By contrast, when Hubert unbuttons his jacketand opens it wide to show Albert his bountiful, unfettered breasts, hedemonstrates a lovely ease with the contradictions of his female flesh and hismasculine self.
Albert Nobbsdoes a fine job of narrating the gains and losses incurred along the continuumthe two characters represent.  With itsclose-in cinematography and Dublin street sets that offer little hint of an “outside”to this late nineteenth century world, AlbertNobbs clarifies how history and society constrain possibilities for genderperformance.  For that alone, as well as thepleasure of Close’s and McTeer’s masterful performances, Albert Nobbs is an important and worthy pleasure.
The Feminist Spectator