Albert Nobbs: Critic Reviews

Ms. McTeer's sly, exuberant performance is a pure delight, and the counterpoint between her physical expressiveness and Ms. Close's tightly coiled reserve is a marvel to behold.

A gripping ensemble piece, good-humoured even at the end of its tether.

Though this period drama is meant to be thought-provoking and prompt intriguing queries about gender, it leaves too many questions unanswered.

The result of [Close's] passion project? Getting to look like Bruce Jenner in a bowler and high starched collar.

The rest of the movie, sadly, can't live up to its leads.

Unfortunately, Albert is so good at being unobtrusive, he nearly disappears from his own story, making it hard for us to get invested in it.

Nobbs is such a spectral presence that infusing any measure of life into this person is an insurmountable challenge.

The delicate art of impersonating self

McTeer's sly, wise rendering of Hubert, a person every bit as battered by life as Albert has been, but with enough residual core and joie de vivre to reinvent himself on his own terms, picks out the meaning of Albert Nobbs.

The stolid inertia of this story is so joyless that the film's sole "passionate" element is the desire to garner Oscar consideration for Close's performance.

Glenn Close's singular accomplishment in willing Albert Nobbs to the screen is the stuff actors dream about.

Close is magnetic, accepting an acting experiment with a thrilling fearlessness and devotion to complete immersion. If only the rest of the production matched her grace and concentration.

If it's guilty of too much understatement, of being too muted, you can just chalk that up to the timid nature of its title character infusing every scene with the sadness of somebody voluntarily burying himself alive.

This story of literal and figurative female sexual repression feels curiously unfinished, its many layers rather decorously undisturbed.

[Glenn Close] does an exemplary job of giving a surface-level performance, which is the kind of praise that no matter how generously it is meant, just won't come out sounding like a compliment.

Albert Nobbs has the packaging and promise of something quite special, but there's too much narrative bubble wrap inside.

The heart of the movie beats like a drum, and got me in step from the start.

There is comedy in it. But mostly there's just a kind of soft, quiet sadness - about lives unlived, about chances lost, about loves forever unexpressed.

Close's performance is exquisite, carefully etched with bits of pain and ecstasy.

Close never provides an entry point into the soul of this complex (and otherwise nameless) person, making it harder and harder to view the character as sympathetic.

Neither the movie nor the performance is memorable enough to cause much stir, and they will likely get lost amidst better end-of-the-year offerings.

As good as the performances are, I found the screenplay and Rodrigo Garcia's direction tonally inconsistent. The unusual premise seems to be played at some moments for laughs and at other times with heavy-handed solemnity.

An odd but endearing drama about a meticulous waiter in 1898 Dublin with a gigantic secret and expansive dreams for the future.

All that passion behind the scenes doesn't really translate on screen.

Albert Nobbs isn't exactly offensive or discriminatory; it just dances around all the interesting sexual politics at its core and is content to be a totally by-the-numbers period piece. A singular movie, this ain't.