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In 19th-century Ireland, painfully shy butler Albert Nobbs hides an incredible secret: He is really a she. But when Albert meets a handsome painter, it's time for her to look for a way to escape the lie she has been living.
Albert is at the heart of it all and we see her through her own prism of vulnerability, resulting in a very human story about the search for love, acceptance and understanding of the self.
As the pinched, ever-wary, heartbreaking Nobbs, Close gives a tricky, high wire, award-worthy performance yet she commendably resists any temptation to be showy, campy or spectacular in the least.
Close, in one of her greatest performances, is quiet, still, almost invisible to those around her. It's not a stunt or an impersonation, it's a perfect realization of what someone in her position might endure just to eat.
There's no contrived moralizing bridge to modern relevance, no overt nod to contemporary gender politics and no real reason why Close shouldn't get some respect this awards season.
What you feel, watching Close, is not that you are watching gender being bent into new, absorbing shapes but that you might as well have stayed home and leafed through a book on Magritte.
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.