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Hotel waiter Albert (Glenn Close) woos Helen (Mia Wasikowska) in ‘Albert Nobbs,’ opening Friday. Photo by Patrick Redmond.

Hotel waiter Albert (Glenn Close) woos Helen (Mia Wasikowska) in ‘Albert Nobbs,’ opening Friday. Photo by Patrick Redmond.

After playing the part of a 19th–century British cross–dresser on the stage, Glenn Close worked to bring the tightly crafted character study to the big screen. Watching the poignant, if slight, results, we can understand just how tough it was for her to find financial backing for Albert Nobbs, a tidy period piece starring Close herself in the title role.

Without makeup, Close’s face is a blank canvas of ambivalent gender—sensitive, shining and ultimately sad. This face guides us through the “downstairs” world of a Dublin hotel, Morrison’s, run by aging coquette Mrs. Baker (Pauline Collins) and loaded with a full deck of social discards who have made a family for themselves at the popular Victorian establishment. The hotel doctor (Brendan Gleeson) likes his Bushmills too much. The youngest chambermaid, Helen (Mia Wasikowska), pines for romance and a life of her own. Wealthy lords and ladies (including Jonathan Rhys Meyers as Viscount Yarrell) frequent the dining room (and tear up the bedrooms), where Mr. Nobbs is one of the tight-lipped, impeccably mannered servants. Secretly, however, Nobbs is carefully saving his gratuities toward the day when he can buy his own little business and perhaps share it with a wife.

But as we already know, Nobbs is in fact a woman who has found work, and perhaps a true identity, as a man. Fate turns Nobbs’ secret life upside down when house painter Hubert Page arrives to spruce up the interior. Mrs. Pearce insists that Page share Nobbs’ room for one night until other accommodations are found. And yes, you guessed it. Nobbs’ true biology is discovered, and thus begins the slimmest of story lines, hung upon a largely outstanding cast and the fervor of producer/star Close.

The cinematography is almost sculptural in this authentic-looking period piece, the camera like brushstrokes revealing the worn surfaces of the kitchen courtyard, the starched laces and rich velvets of the hotel’s public rooms. And, to be sure there are gorgeous male bodies to be seen at every turn. One of those belongs to dashing Aaron Johnson, who plays an itinerant handyman, Joe, who stumbles upon a job at Morrison’s. He also catches the eye of Helen, and there begins a courtship that complicates Albert Nobbs’ own designs on the young housemaid.

Since the part of Hubert Page is played by the fiery-eyed, broad-shouldered Janet McTeer, it’s probably not giving away too much to point out that Hubert too is living a gender lie, and soon the two cross-dressing females exchange life stories. As played by McTeer, Hubert is as robust and dashing as Close’s Albert is repressed and boring. In fact, Glenn Close was perhaps too generous in sharing the screen with McTeer, who owns this film from the moment she steps in, ablaze with charisma, thick, rough tweeds and hand-knit sweaters. Thanks to McTeer’s frank and open face, her character exudes a complete sense of who she is, even in her male guise. And that, of course, is part of the film’s subtext—not only that gender is merely a cultural performance, but that even the stereotypes about gender-crossing themselves are conventions to be questioned.

In Albert Nobbs, everyone is looking for love in all the wrong places. One of the interwoven tales, of Helen and the stunning-looking Joe, their wild romance, their misery over circumstance, and ultimately their inevitable conflicts, falters simply because it is so obvious that it will come to no good. And however good to behold is the young actor Aaron Johnson, he is no actor.

The film tells a grim little tale of quiet desperation with precious little action, plot or remedy. It does offer obvious pull quotes, such as Albert’s remark to Hubert that  “We are both disguised as ourselves.” Yes, and what an interesting starting point that might have made.

 

Albert Nobbs

R; 113 min.

Opens Friday