Multiple Emmy-nominated Saturday Night Live writer Julio Torres first caught my attention as an actor with his absorbingly understated supporting turns in comedies on film and television such as The Other Two, Together Together, Shrill, Search Party, and more recently a characterful voice performance that further queered the animated movie Nimona. Making those roles his own, all of those contributions immediately dispalyed his comic creativity and drew me into his idiosyncratic, kooky world, leaving me wanting more. We got to spend two seasons in that world with the Peabody-winning HBO series Los Espookys, which he co-created and starred in with Fred Armisen and Ana Fabrega. The same imaginative flair which was the hallmark of that series is on full display in his enchanting feature film writing and directing debut, Problemista, which world premiered at SXSW last year and opens in select theaters on Friday, March 1st, 2024 before expanding nationally on March 22nd.
There is an alluring fairytale quality to the film’s opening sequence, as we see a vision of Alejandro’s (Logan J. Alarcon-Poucel as a child, then Julio Torres as an adult) childhood, growing up in El Salvador under the watchful and nurturing eye of his loving mother Dolores (a wonderful Catalina Saavedra, who also appeared in Los Espookys and delivered a comedy tour-de-force in Sebastián Silva’s Rotting in the Sun). Contributing to the whimsical, deliciously off-kilter charm is the rich and warm storybook voice-over by Isabella Rossellini as the ever-so-slightly wry omniscient narrator; along with some delightful special effect flourishes that evoke the unfettered imagination of an artistic child; and Robert Ouyang Rusli’s tender, stirring score which enhances Torres’ world-building with each note. Dolores’ caretaking comes to an abrupt end—as we see in her recurring nightmare—when Alejandro disappears out of sight, lost in the forest, before entering a dark and menacing looking cave which figuratively leads him to the dangers that she fears are lurking in New York City.
Rather than the sound of something like Taylor Swift’s “Welcome To New York” and expensive, glitzy aerial shots of a gleaming cityscape, instead—with typical inventiveness and humour—director Torres and veteran cinematographer Fredrik Wenzel give us a sweeping shot of two framed aerial photographs of Manhattan that have been dumped out onto the street and sit among the rest of the trash. That was the moment when I knew I was going to love this film, and Problemista is filled with such gorgeous original details that also help to keep things grounded in the real world. Hat tip to production designer Katie Byron and art director by Jasmine Cho.
Alejandro has journeyed to New York with his particular American dream, to design toys for Hasbro. But while he has an endless stream of off-the-wall ideas to modify existing toys (like a Slinky that won’t go down steps) which he relentlessly submits to a nameless email address hoping to be accepted into the company’s incubator scheme, he has to deal with the reality of navigating life in the city. Rent needs to be paid for his cramped, shared Brooklyn apartment, overdraft fees stack up, and he has to wrestle with the endless bureaucracy involved in remaining in the country legally. As well as narratively, the frustration of the catch-22 of his experience as an immigrant is vividly captured visually in a sequence that sees him trapped in an infinite maze-like structure of identical offices. We see him make his way through one room, only to find himself in another that leads him back where he started, as the sands of time run out in the hourglass with his name on it. Meanwhile, other immigrants caught up in the system literally disappear as their own time runs out.
Needing a job fast until Hasbro calls, leads Alejandro to the mundane environment of a cryogenics facility, FreezeCorp, where he is charged with watching over the frozen body of an artist, Bobby (RZA), who specialized in under-appreciated paintings of eggs. Before long, Alejandro finds himself entangled in the life of Bobby’s unfrozen wife, an eccentric and mercurial British art critic Elizabeth (Tilda Swinton), who is obsessed with cultivating Bobby’s legacy so that once he is unfrozen he will find himself a successful artist. In her own way, she is as determined in her mission as Alejandro is in his to become a toy designer. But while he quietly pursues his dream, and continues to email Hasbro in private, Elizabeth roars at anything and anybody that gets in her way, and if there is not an obstacle there she will quickly find one. After all, she is a problemista. In Alejandro’s mind, as the intensity builds between them, Elizabeth is a dragon to be tamed or slain by his knight.
Stuck working as Elizabeth’s assistant, at her constant beck and call with the promise of sponsoring his visa to stay in the country, much of the film focuses on the tense but fascinating dynamics between them and the minutiae of their working relationship. Will he be able to learn File Share Pro before she discovers that he can’t use it?
In another actor’s (and indeed writer-director’s) hands Elizabeth might have become a one-dimensional super-Karen, but she is so supremely difficult to deal with and irrational that it somehow becomes endearing, and Swinton finds nuance and the humanity in her monstrous behaviour. It is another genius creation from Swinton that is heightened, but feels like a recognizable person that we’ve all either encountered, or have perhaps even been versions of ourselves at times if we care to admit it. She is immensely highly strung, but in flashbacks we see that she wasn’t always quite as hardened and quick to flare. Oblivious to Alejandro’s struggles, she appears to have no concept of how trivial the details are that get her into such rages and distract her. For instance, when she can’t find a photograph on her iPhone, she immediately calls the Apple helpline to accuse them of hiding it from her.
Nothing is ever right for Elizabeth, but there is a vulnerability behind that prickly exterior that we see hints of, and everything that she does is because she loves her husband. The disarming West Country English accent that Tilda gives the character has a calm, gentle lilt to it that contrasts beautifully with the harsh and erratic way that the woman behaves. While she wears her stylish red hair and sophisticated wardrobe (with some stunning ensembles courtesy of costume designer Catherine George) like armour against the world which she feels is out to get her. She is the sort of preoccupied person who walks around without knowing that the torch on their phone is on (and, amusingly, every time we see her phone in her hand, the torch is always on). Trapped into working for her because of his visa situation, Alejandro is the perfect comic foil for Elizabeth, with Torres managing to make his downtrodden and increasingly desperate but unwaveringly determined character appealingly emotionally open while bringing glints of a knowing, acerbic wit to his wide-eyed sincerity.
In some ways, this a is a tale of two immigrants, though pointedly we hear nothing about Elizabeth’s experience as one. As a well-off, native English-speaking white European married to an American, she probably had a far easier time arriving and remaining in the country than Alejandro. Another privileged figure breezing through life in the city, is the interminably smug Bingham (Fire Island’s James Scully) who is briefly sent to work for Elizabeth as a punishment, and makes a point of telling Elizabeth and Alejandro that he is on his way to a date with a really hot guy as he leaves work for the day.
Alejandro, meanwhile does not have time for dating (or to notice that he has a clump of hair on his head that is permanently sticking up), and it is refreshing to see a lead character in a coming-to-New-York coming-of-age comedy that is focused on something other than their romantic life. His love for toy design is romantic enough in itself. Though there is an unexpectedly touching fleeting connection between him and a stranger (James Seol) who hires Alejandro to clean his windows in his underwear so that he can get off on watching him. It is one of a series of cash-paying jobs that puts the odd in odd-job that Alejandro is forced to do while he is visa-less. He finds these tasks on Craigslist, which is hilariously personified by Larry Owens. The film is enlivened and enriched by a cornucopia of such sparkling appearances from queer and trans artists and performers, contributing to Torres’ distinctive vision of Alejandro’s NYC and queering the fabric of the film without focusing on the characters’ identities, including Megan Stalter, Charlene Incarnate, Shakina, Martine Gutierrez, Spike Einbinder, Glo Tavarez, and a glimpse of Brian Belovitch in the final scene.
These days the word visionary gets thrown around in discussions about film almost as much as masterpiece, but to my mind Torres undoubtedly is one. He’s a true artist with a singular vision and Problemista is continually unpredictable and delectably imaginative. Just as not everyone will appreciate Alejandro’s bizarre toy designs, there will likely be some viewers who don’t chime with the vibe of Torres’ movie, but for those who do there is much to relish. What it has to say about immigration is never heavy-handed, but has a bite and poignancy to it along with the humour. For all its cleverness and inventiveness, it is a film with real heart that is ultimately as unexpectedly moving as it is funny.
Coincidently, Problemista opens the same month that Peter Sillen’s documentary Love Machina, which premiered at Sundance, plays SXSW. It is about futurist Martine Rothblatt, who invented satellite radio, created an AI robot version of her wife Bina, and has committed to being cryogenically preserved with her by Alcor. The film would make for a great double bill with Problemista, with echoes of the love between Bobby and Elizabeth in Bina and Martine’s real life story.
By James Kleinmann
Problemista opens in select theaters on Friday, March 1st and in theaters nationwide on Friday, March 22nd from A24.
