The best movies find ways to be something larger than the one-line description that winds up in TV Guide or other brevity-obsessed outlets.
And so it is with Rodrigo Garcia’s Albert Nobbs, a comedy of manners minus the comedy; while there is wit within a group of writers’ adaptation of George Moore’s short story, this is a movie about the price of personal freedom and how much one is willing to put up with for just the smallest taste..
The gimmick, of course, is that Glenn Close is playing a woman pretending to be a man – and succeeding at it. For decades, Albert Nobbs (Close) has been a butler and waiter at a discreet Dublin hotel, stopping place for minor royals with roaming tastes and a self-interest in discretion. The hotel is both proper and insular, thanks to tight-lipped types like Albert.
