Glenn Close as Albert in Albert Nobbs
Albert Nobbs has been Glenn Close’s passion
project since she performed the title role in Simone Benmussa’s play, The Singular Life of Albert Nobbs, in New
York in 1982. Her commitment pays off in
a beautiful, starring performance in the film she co-wrote and co-produced. With her small eyes peering out of Albert’s
guarded face, Close demonstrates her sensitivity to the emotional nuances of
being a woman in the late 1800s Dublin who spends her life living as a man.
Albert Nobbs
is based on a novella by the Irish author George Moore. Moore makes a brief appearance as a character in
the film as a guest at Morrison’s hotel, where Nobbs works as a waiter for the
preemptory, social-climbing proprietor, Mrs. Baker (Pauline Collins). In Benmussa’s play, Moore narrated Albert’s
story, providing a critical frame that guided spectators’ understanding of the
compromises Albert had made to enable his own survival.
Here, what we learn of Albert’s past and the
reasons for his life-long masquerade as a man come from stories Albert shares
with Hubert Page (Janet McTeer). Page is
a housepainter with a similar life, with whom Albert is forced to share his bed
for a night at the hotel. When a
bothersome flea forces Albert to strip off his clothes, he inadvertently reveals
his female body to Page.
Fearful and humiliated by this exposure, the
horrified Albert begs Page repeatedly through the night and the next day not to reveal the truth. When
Albert’s whining becomes bothersome, Page puts down his paint brush, closes the
door, and exposes his breasts to Albert, shocking him to his core. Albert is incredulous to have met someone
like him, who carries such a deep and abiding secret. But the two passing women don’t fully share
their stories until Albert seeks out Page and his wife, Cathleen, at the flat
they share in the city.
Hubert Page, it turns out, fled an abusive
marriage by stealing her husband’s clothes and his occupation, reinventing
herself as a male house painter to make her way in the world. She meets Cathleen (Bronagh Gallagher), another woman living
alone, and they share a home until people’s gossip forces them to marry. When Albert visits their cozy flat, it’s
clear that Hubert and Cathleen have made a full and rich life together. Their physical and emotional intimacy is
compelling and mysterious to Albert, who can’t quite contemplate a life beyond
the structured, impersonal, servile routine to which he’s disciplined himself
at Morrison’s.
With Page’s encouragement, Albert begins to dream
about opening a tobacco shop finding a companion of his own. But Albert has lived unemotionally and
impassively for so long, he has no idea how to court a woman or really how to
interact in more than a professional manner with anyone at all.
In fact, when Page asks the waiter his name, Albert
responds, “Albert.” Page clarifies, “No,
your real name.” After a beat and a
swallow, Albert says again, “Albert.”
The wrenching moment underlines their differences. Page has recreated himself but kept his
spirit intact. Albert has become the
surface of his masquerade and can no longer fathom his own depths.
The film, directed by Rodrigo Garcia, provides Albert’s
cross-dressed existence with a justification different from Benmussa’s
adaptation. Albert haltingly tells Page
that he was raised by a foster mother, whose financial circumstances soured,
forcing them to mingle with a rougher crowd than those to which Albert was
accustomed. He relates that as a young
girl, he was assaulted by a gang of boys, and soon after, began passing as a
male waiter. The film implies that
sexual violence turned Albert toward the gender impersonation that became his
life.
By contrast, Benmussa adapted Moore’s story to
demonstrate the economic forces that would compel a woman to pass as a
man. In her Brechtian, non-realist and
non-psychologized play, Albert’s desperate need for economic survival explains
his male attire and his single-minded devotion to counting his tips. He
organizes all of his relationships according to financial necessity.
Close’s film, too, captures some of Albert’s
Scrooge-like attachment to his coins, which he fingers luxuriously, records
precisely in his journal, and buries under a floorboard in his room at the
hotel. When he courts Helen Dawes (Mia
Wasikowska), a chambermaid at Morrison’s, he sees her as a partner for his business
endeavor and little more, because he can’t conceive of a relationship that isn’t
driven by the cold imperative of cash. But
that story about sexual violence makes him seem more a broken soul than someone
wily enough to pass as a man to make his way.
Nonetheless, the film is a fine demonstration of
gender as performance. At a masquerade
ball at Morrison’s, to which only the hotel’s guests are invited to wear
costumes, 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 a
doctor. We’re both disguised as
ourselves.” The doctor has no idea how
descriptive he’s been. He finally uncovers
Albert’s truth when the waiter dies from a blow to his head, suffered during an
altercation with Joe Mackins (Aaron Johnson), the young man with whom he vies
for Helen Dawe’s affections.
Mackins provides the masculine sexual energy of Albert Nobbs, and proves the only one at
Morrison’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’t
articulate the problem, Joe is the only one who sees through Albert’s
charade. That is, all except an
odd-looking, nameless young boy, a guest of the hotel who stares at Albert
wordlessly, 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 so
constrained that none of the others would ever suspect that a person who looks
like a man in fact is not. For instance,
when Cathleen dies of typhoid fever, Albert and Hubert venture out costumed as
women, wearing the dresses that Cathleen made as a kind of tribute to her life. In their experiment with nostalgia, they look
awkward and ridiculous. Page’s dress is
too small for the tall and bulky guy; his long arms stick out of the sleeves
and the dress fails to conceal his painters’ boots, in which he lumbers along
the Dublin streets. In his bonnet and skirt,
Albert, too, looks silly and strange.
But a man passing them in the lane tips his hat to
Hubert and Albert anyway, reading femininity from their dresses regardless of
their inadequate gender performances. As
Judith Butler would argue, the surface enactment is enough to signal gender, which
for Hubert and Albert, if not for all of us, has no depth anyway. Watching the film, I had so accustomed myself
to Albert and Hubert’s utterly persuasive gender performances that despite what
I knew, their outing as women seemed sad and pathetic.
This moment of female impersonation wasn’t part of
Benmussa’s play, and makes an uneasy addition to the story. Close plays Albert in that scene as entranced
with his feminine attire, despite his clumsiness with its draping. Albert and Page walk on the beach in their
women’s wear, and Albert suddenly seems to feel free. His bonnet falls onto his back and he runs
ahead of Page, arms stretched out, catching the wind in his hair.
Page looks on, amused. For him, femininity has long lost its interest
or its necessity. His grief over Cathleen’s
death means his feminine impersonation is more about wearing things she touched
than 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.
Close and McTeer are utterly affecting in their
performance of the men’s halting friendship.
Albert can barely express himself; throughout the film, he casts his
gaze down or away, rarely making eye contact.
Watching Close slowly move Albert’s eyes to meet Hubert’s is a study in
courage and need. And yet what we see is
the shadow of a man, whose excitement is kindled not by emotional connection
but by the possibility of rearranging her living situation to improve her
economics.
Cathleen’s death provides an opportunity for
Albert. He suggests that he replace Cathleen
in Hubert’s home, so that they can keep their expenses low and live
reasonably. Hubert protests, “But I
loved her,” an emotion unintelligible to Albert.
Likewise, when he courts Helen Dawes, she’s
frustrated and insulted that Albert plans to marry her without even venturing
to kiss her. Startled by her complaint,
Albert obliges by pecking her cheek, sending Helen running back to the virile
if corrupt Joe Mackins.
The wrong kind of kiss . . .
Albert, in other words, is a bit of a fool at
Morrison’s. When he’s not working, he
sits on the landing between floors, looking up and down, scheming about his
future and making notes about his money.
Benmussa’s dialogue notes that Albert is neither up nor down, neither
here nor there, a physical representation of his refusal to inhabit binary
gender categories. Close sits on the
landing in the film, too, but without the critical comment of the play, he
seems simply strange.
The film, however, can paint the lives around
Albert with richer contrasting detail. Jonathan
Rhys Meyers plays a viscount who arrives at Morrison’s with an entourage of
friends and women to drink and have sex.
Mrs. Baker enables their assignations, and their unfettered heterosexual
energy permeates the place. Even Mrs.
Baker flirts with the doctor shamelessly, though he’s having an affair with
another of the chambermaids.
Only Albert has no place in the hotel’s network of
sexual intrigue. When Helen finds
herself pregnant and she and Joe fight about their future, Albert tries to
rescue her by offering to take care of her and the child. For his chivalry, Joe pushes him violently
and he falls into the hallway wall, giving Albert the head injury that kills
him. He dies alone, his money buried
under his floor, where Mrs. Baker finds it and uses it to employ Hubert to
paint her entire hotel.
The doctor who finds Albert shakes his head over
the miserable circumstances in which people live. Albert’s death inspires him to change his own
life; he runs off with his chambermaid and leaves Morrison’s Hotel. Helen has her baby, which she names
Albert. And Hubert paints the hotel
where 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 and
political punch of Benmussa’s play, at least Albert Nobbs lets us watch Close and McTeer in performances that
should compel conversation about what it means to inhabit the strictures of gender. The difference between Close as, for only one
example, 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 us
a lot not just about Close’s talent as an actor, but about how masculinity and
femininity are always just constructions.
Close and McTeer, out of costume and makeup
McTeer and Close, buddies
On the other hand, the film’s most wrenching
moment is when Albert rips open her shirt to scratch that flea and reveals her
breasts encased in a girdle. The way
Close gathers her shirt and her covers her breasts, as if she’s trying to make
them and herself disappear, illustrates her painful body shame. By contrast, when Hubert unbuttons his jacket
and opens it wide to show Albert his bountiful, unfettered breasts, he
demonstrates a lovely ease with the contradictions of his female flesh and his
masculine self.
Albert Nobbs
does a fine job of narrating the gains and losses incurred along the continuum
the two characters represent. With its
close-in cinematography and Dublin street sets that offer little hint of an “outside”
to this late nineteenth century world, Albert
Nobbs clarifies how history and society constrain possibilities for gender
performance. For that alone, as well as the
pleasure of Close’s and McTeer’s masterful performances, Albert Nobbs is an important and worthy pleasure.
The Feminist Spectator