Reviews
The Evening Standard
Derek Malcolm
“Garcia also loses grip of the central theme of Nobbs’s quiet desperation not to become the woman she really is but a fully-fledged human being of either sex. The compensation is the riveting Close, whose poor Nobbs is unable to look anybody in the eye ... With a cast like this, Albert Nobbs is eminently watchable — it just doesn’t add up to a whole that tugs on the emotions as it should.”
27/04/2012
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The Financial Times
Antonia Quirke
“If this is indeed the 65-year-old Close’s Great Moment then it’s an unfinished, limp one, and with all the strangled mentality of the Catholic Ireland of the day.”
26/04/2012
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The Times
Kate Muir
“Close plays Nobbs as a pale, asexual creature, raised amid the constraints of a convent school and then in the semi-public arena of the hotel. Her loneliness is ghastly, but it is hard to get under her skin. Perhaps the problem is that Close was so busy lowering her voice and being masculine that she forgot the reasons why. And the more you see of the warm, funny, believable McTeer as a man, the more you wish they had given her the part of Nobbs.”
27/04/2012
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The Sunday Times
Edward Porter
“Rodrigo Garcia’s film isn’t concerned with gender as much as with the pathos of its protagonist’s naivety. This trait in Albert runs improbably deep, making the story hard to credit. Still, the film’s oddness is an attraction in itself.”
29/04/2012
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The Independent on Sunday
Nicholas Barber
“It's not just that Close doesn't look like a man, it's that she doesn't look like a human being: her coating of prosthetic make-up is so smooth and waxy that, with her stiff stance and her outsized bowler hat, she could be the Butler-bot 3000. ”
29/04/2012
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The Observer
Philip French
“McTeer's performance is one of the most convincing of its kind I've ever seen. Close, looking rather like a pickled version of Gabriel Byrne and sporting a sub-cockney accent disturbingly reminiscent of Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins, is both the film's generous begetter and also its central problem.”
29/04/2012
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Total Film
Matt Mueller
“In playing a woman who’s had to repress femininity just to survive, Close delivers a performance of such walled-in seclusion it’s near impossible to pierce Nobbs’ humanity. For a grand dame like Close, that’s an insurmountable and fatal distraction, Oscar nomination or not, and a stark contrast to the mesmerising McTeer, whose genderbending gets shamefully little screen time but whose vitality leaves you wishing this unhappy, plodding tale had been called Hubert Page instead.”
16/04/2012
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The Guardian
Peter Bradshaw
“ Close looks off-puttingly like a Tussauds waxwork of Robin Williams – specifically Williams playing the butler-robot in the 1999 sci-fi drama Bicentennial Man. ”
26/04/2012
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The Independent
Anthony Quinn
“The extent of Albert's masochistic delusion is meant to exact pathos, but it's unfortunately just creepy – and ridiculous. Close, having played the role in a 1980s stage adaptation, might have pulled it off in her thirties when Albert was possibly still a catch. Now in her mid-sixties, she looks too lived-in to be a young girl's suitor, even if she can cut it as a male impersonator. Which I rather doubt in any case.”
27/04/2012
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The Scotsman
Alistair Harkness
“It’s left to the also Oscar-nominated Janet McTeer – playing a woman in a similar predicament to Albert but much more comfortable with her position in life – to supply what few eye-opening revelations the film can muster. ”
26/04/2012
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The Daily Telegraph
Robbie Collin
“With its bisexual hotel guests and cross-dressing costume parties, Albert Nobbs is constantly reaching for something — heck, anything — to say about sexual identity, but neither Close nor her director, Rodrigo García, seem to know quite what it should be. For all its gender-bending intrigue, this is a cataclysmically sexless film: seldom has drag felt like such a drag. ”
27/04/2012
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Time Out
Tom Huddleston
“There’s precious little to enjoy. The grim, grey-hued result is about as far from contemporary drag chic as it’s possible to get – appropriate for the subject matter, perhaps, but hardly the stuff of satisfying cinema.”
25/04/2012
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