The man in the woman
Glenn Close plays the title role in Rodrigo Garcia’s Albert Nobbs (2011) – a story about an Irish woman living the life of a man, to work and survive in 19th-century Dublin. Albert (whose real female name we never get to know), started dressing as a man since the group rape she experienced in her teens. She got her first job as a waiter and soon made a career out of it, visiting various cities and serving in many hotels. Settling finally in Dublin, she gathers every penny she earns in order to fulfill her dream of buying a tobacco shop. One element is missing in her perfect picture of a happy tobacconist’s future – a wife. Yes, Albert, a woman, wants to get married and he/she chooses young maid Helen (Mia Wasikowska) to be his/her future happy bride.
His attempts to attract Helen, are of course, hopeless. Aside from the fact that Helen has no idea about Albert’s gender, the waiter is deeply eccentric, highly introvert, even disturbed. Not too surprising, considering she has been living a lie for many years, but to anyone not familiar with Albert’s business, she simply comes across as a weirdo.
There is, however, one person who knows Albert’s secret – it so happens that the hotel handyman turns out to be a woman passing as a man as well; what are the odds?! ‘Mr Page’ is the one planting the idea of marriage in Albert’s head and, as it turns out, wrongly…
The story has been staged for the past 30 years, and it shows – it resembles a TV drama more than a movie but this does give it a nice intimate touch. Glenn Close is clearly the star, and uses all her skills to create a character so intense that it’s almost painful to watch her suffer in the cage of her lies, living a dream that can never come true.
I attached a bit of a sentimental note to this film, because it reminds me of Gosford Park (2011). However, it is a weird film – the story is touching but also disturbing, as is Albert him/herself. The hopelessness of his actions is tragic, and then there is the unrealistic element – the fact that two women passing as man met in 19th century Ireland. It’s highly unlikely but, then again, litentia poetica…
113 mins.