Alejandro (Julio Torres) is an aspiring toy designer from El Salvador, struggling to bring his unusual ideas to life in New York City. As time on his work visa runs out, a job assisting an erratic art-world outcast (Tilda Swinton) becomes his only hope to stay in the country and realize his dream. From writer/director Julio Torres comes a surreal adventure through the equally treacherous worlds of New York City and the U.S. Immigration system.
REVIEW:
Julio Torres is the least interesting thing in his directing debut Problemista. It’s a loosely based autobiographical feature recounting his ordeal to find an employer willing to sponsor him for an immigration visa. His character, Alejandro, goes through countless soul sucking jobs, many of dubious value posted on Craigslist. Then, he finds Elizabeth (Tilda Swinton), an art critic who impulsively hires him to assemble a gallery show of paintings by her terminally ill and now cryogenically frozen husband, Bobby (Rza).
Elizabeth is argumentative, venomous, perpetually aggrieved, an embitter New Yorker. She spends her time screaming at everybody from tech supports to restaurant wait staff, badgering them to give her free services and food for the slightest perceived inconvenience. Swinton plays her with fingernails curled, the kinds of Karen constantly looking for a fight. Underneath the angry façade there are flashes of loneliness in her eyes, an abiding, hovering grief.
Problemista suffers from a too muchness problem. Elizabeth barrages overwhelm with her constant arias of panics. There’s not enough of her softer side, just constant offense. She’s a gremlin constantly changing spiked outfits and power suits. She takes up so much space that she negates Alejandro as a sympathetic character, everyone of any emotional validity.
The film admires her because she rejects the impersonal and digital. She hates those who won’t accommodate her grief, won’t bend the rules for her. She’s ignorant of all those who robotically recite the rules, unaware that they are just ordinary people struggling to pay the rent. The human being screaming to be served can’t identify with the humanity of those who serve her. That’s Problemistsa biggest, most unsolvable problem. It can get out of its own bad way.
Problemista gets a 3.0/5 or a B. It’s streaming on Max.
CREDITS:
Directed by
Written by
Julio Torres
Produced by
- Julio Torres
- Dave McCary
- Ali Herting
- Emma Stone
Starring
- Tilda Swinton
- Julio Torres
- RZA
- Greta Lee
- Catalina Saavedra
- James Scully
Cinematography
Fredrik Wenzel
Edited by
- Sara Shaw
- Jacob Schulsinger
Music by
Robert Ouyang Rusli
Production
company
Distributed by
Release dates
- March 14, 2023(SXSW)
- March 1, 2024(United States)
Running time
105 minutes[1]
Country
United States
Language
English
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