ALBERT NOBBS has some highly promising elements to it. The story of a waiter (Glenn Close) born out of wedlock, who has been forced to carve out a career masquerading as a male, offers some trenchant comments on gender and sexualities in late Victorian societies, as well as pointing to the prejudices that we still harbor today.In the closeknit, socially stratified world of Morrison's Hotel, Dublin, presided over by the maitresse d'h (Pauline Collins), men fulfill the active roles while women are consigned into the shadows as chamber-maids, cooks and the like. If anyone such as the housemaid Helen (Maria Wasikowska) is unfortunate enough to get pregnant, they run the risk of being cast out into the street as "brazen hussies." The house-painter Hubert (Janet McTeer) reacts to this situation by living as a man with a spouse in tow; at no point is her masquerade discovered in public.Albert tries the same strategy, but has to trust in others' willingness not to tell her employer what has happened. The fact that this renders her life miserable is obvious: when s/he gets the chance to shed her male attire and don a dress for the first time, the experience is almost overwhelming for her, as she runs along the Dublin sands like a child before falling down over her skirts.Rodrigo Garcia's film makes some good points about the ways in which individuals are constrained by social convention, especially among the lower classes. Servants are routinely abused, and fired at will, while the maitresse d'h profits at their expense while putting on a public mask of Christian charity.On the other hand, the narrative runs out of steam somewhat, as the story descends into sentimentality, especially when Albert believes that he has become attracted to Helen and vies for her attentions with wastrel Joe (Aaron Taylor-Johnson). The contest, predictably, proves an unequal one; and Albert passes away as solitary in death as in life, alone in his poky room at Morrison's. There is a happy ending of sorts; but we feel that director Garcia has somehow missed the opportunity to continue his criticism of sexualities and attitudes towards them. No one, it seems, is any the wiser for having learned about Albert's suffering.

Glenn Close does a compelling job at portraying a man in this film. The film is truly about identity in the 19th century but could easily translate into today's times. What I enjoy about this film is it's different than the typical role reversal (woman dressing as a man and vice versa). Sure, it starts off as Albert (Glenn Close) as a woman portraying a man just to survive but what separates this film from the others is that Albert is attracted to a woman instead of a man. Here is where the identity part comes in, we get to see Albert go through the emotions of figuring out what defines him/her and what makes Albert comfortable.There is a ton of symbolism in this film. Jonathan Rhys Meyers plays a small but significant role. He is only in a few scenes but each one is important. He is a viscount and a guest of the hotel. *spoiler* In the second scene, he is in a bathrobe and his friend was naked in the bed and says to him, "should we wake the girls?" that wouldn't mean anything but not only is he married but there are other allusions later in the film. In the following scene, which is a costume party for the guests, he is in a dress, while the viscountess is in his tuxedo. The final scene is him talking to the mistress about losing his key to the adjoining room; which alludes to the scene of them being naked. It seems like this character was brought in to show that when you have money, you have more freedom. To counter this, Albert couldn't even wear a dress in his own bedroom for fear of someone finding out he was a woman. The consequences were that he could not making a living vs. the viscount and viscountess wouldn't have that problem. I mentioned those scenes to also discuss sexuality. Again, both the viscount and viscountess have the freedom to explore both genders sexually. In this film, *spoiler* since Albert is attracted to a woman, s/he gets the chance to see what life would be like to marry a woman. S/he meets Hubert Page, whom is also a woman dressed as a man but is married to a woman. We get to see Albert courting another server/waitress/maid that works in the hotel. Since there is a vast age difference and lack of experience, the server (Helen) has to tell Albert what courting is like in the 19th century. Overall, a good film which raises questions about gender roles, expectations and identity.

Disappointing film and performances. It's an all around mess. Glenn Close, whom I expected to be in top form, let me down. She services the role and is successful to very short extents. She rocks the mannerisms and the voice, but I never really felt apart of Albert's journey. Close distanced herself from the story (maybe the problem is the writing isn't handled with the intelligence it needed to be). The main problem is the screenplay; the script is way too thin to be dealing with the thickness of the subject matter it tries to tackle. The directing is dreadful. The direction makes the film jaded like a broken piece of glass. Near the middle there's a cruel plot that is set up that draws you into the story slightly, but barely keeps you interested. It's just a really bad attempt at making a thought-provoking film.Rating: 3/10Grade: D+

Glenn Close takes an Oscar-bait role and runs with it as the title character in "Albert Nobbs," but it's Janet McTeer who steals the show.Close plays a woman living as a man in 19th Century Ireland. She's been desperately clinging to her ruse for so long that it's almost as if she has become a man -- or rather, as if she's lost any sense of gender identity at all and become something neither male nor female. It's a strange character, and while Albert is fairly sympathetic (he's harmless enough, and we feel bad when bad things happen to him), it's also difficult to completely warm to him. Whether that's intentional on Close's part (Albert has, after all, made a life out of a lie that requires him to literally distance himself as much as possible from those around him) or a result of poor direction/writing I'm not sure, but no movie that focuses so centrally on one character can be completely successful if it also so stubbornly refuses to let us into that character's head.Which is why the presence of Janet McTeer is so welcome and why the screen blazes to life whenever she makes an appearance. She's also a woman living as a man (what are the odds? was this THAT common in 19th Century Ireland?) but one who does it with much less apology and much more swagger. Where Albert tries to fade into the background, Hugh (McTeer's character) ably occupies front and center. I've only seen McTeer in one other film ("Tumbleweeds"), but the range she displays in just these two films is awe inspiring.Modern day audiences will probably spend a lot of mental energy trying to decide what exactly Albert and Hugh are. Are they lesbians? Are they transgender before the term existed? Are they just confused? Or are they just women who think they must literally be men to participate in a man's world? I don't know that there are clear answers, and I certainly don't think what they are can be summarized using contemporary categories. We live in a time that now provides labels for just about everything. But those labels don't necessarily apply to the world of 100+ years ago.Grade: B