PATRICK REDMOND Enlarge Image

Albert Nobbs

"You know, Mr. Nobbs, I think you are the strangest man I’ve ever met."
   
Oh, if the young maid Helen (Mia Wasikowska) only knew. The very casting of the titular figure in Albert Nobbs, for which Glenn Close has been nominated for a 2012 best actress Oscar, is the tipoff: the character is a bird, not a bloke — and that’s not the half of it.
   
Based upon a short story by George Moore, co-scripted by Close and novelist John Banville (plus Gabriella Prekop), this is an absorbing study of a peculiar, particular character very much on the margins. It isn’t simply that Nobbs has long successfully masqueraded as a man, affording him/herself what would otherwise be inaccessible opportunity. It’s that Nobbs has, in effect, become a man whose physiological reality has become a dread inconvenience.
   
As the film opens, Nobbs holds a steady serving position at a Dublin hotel in the latter 19th century. One night Nobbs is forced to bunk with Hubert Page (Janet McTeer, nominated for best supporting actress for her performance), who discovers the truth and shocks Nobbs by revealing they’re birds of a feather.
   
The revelation is transformative for Nobbs; it turns out Page has been leading a successful married life with a woman. Nobbs, who has money socked away under the floorboards, decides such a life is within his/her own reach, and plans to woo the young Helen into blissful domesticity. That is, if Helen’s suspicious fella Joe (Aaron Johnson) doesn’t get in the way.
   
Close appears convincingly as a man, albeit an odd one. It’s a measure of success that later, when the character steps out in a dress for the first time in years, it appears out of place.
   
Perhaps more accurately, however, the character appears asexual, if asexuality could assume outward form. In another sense, Nobbs is really betwixt and between, having not internalized any specific gender identity.
   
Nor could Nobbs be considered a lesbian, properly speaking: the character’s attraction to women is not sexual hardwiring, but the programming of lived experience. For so long has Nobbs thought him/herself a man, the choice just seems… natural.
   
But Albert Nobbs is about even more. What Nobbs, Page and Helen are all doing is making the best of the opportunities afforded them within their world’s cruelly narrow parameters, and seeking some measure of happiness. Some individuals are just more extreme cases of assuming necessary roles to get by. What a world to imagine, in which we could all be ourselves.