Albert Nobbs

This stoic and stilted period drama about a stoic and stilted transgendered person living in 19th century Dublin is a film that seems more concerned with presenting surfaces than discovering inner truths.  It has all the trappings of an important story except that it doesn’t really have anything to say.  Its central character seems to be so utterly bewildered by life and so entirely cut off from it, that it is pretty hard to connect or care about him/her.  Glenn Close played this role on Broadway in the early 80s and has tried to get a film about him made for decades.  Perhaps it is simply her current age--and therefore the character’s age--that prevents this film from feeling at all credible.  While I’m sure that throughout all of history there have been women who have passed as men for their whole lives, and vice versa.  However, nothing about this movie makes me believe that this character ever really existed.  Rather he/she feels like an actor’s creation and, even worse, like Oscar bait (as does the whole movie).  When Janet McTiers’s character shows up, the film suddenly become interesting, because we like this person.  Rather than coming off as a well-adjusted contrast to Albert’s repression, McTier’s Hubert Page exposes the film’s flaws by giving us a fleshed-out character rather than a set of behaviors and mannerism.  The supporting players are enjoyable to see, but this is the least interesting work most of them have done in; either in long careers, like Pauline Collins' or short ones like Mia Wasikowska's.