Albert Nobbs

Albert Nobbs (2011) is Rodrigo García's quiet, aching drama, and you can watch it online on iFILM. Glenn Close plays the title role she carried in her head for nearly thirty years before getting it onto the screen.

Late-1800s Dublin. At the respectable Morrison's Hotel works a flawless waiter named Albert Nobbs: past forty, soft-spoken, hoarding every coin, steering clear of pubs and crowds. Guests and coworkers see only a polite shadow behind a tray. What none of them know is that Albert is a woman who has spent three decades in men's clothes, because that was the only way to earn a wage and stay safe. An encounter with a painter named Hubert, who hides a secret of his own, and with a pretty housemaid called Helen (Mia Wasikowska) stirs an old dream in Albert: a little shop, a home, a different life.

Glenn Close and Janet McTeer were both nominated for Academy Awards for their work here. It is a small, melancholy film about the cost of a mask worn so long you forget how to take it off. Stream Albert Nobbs (2011) online on iFILM.