Problemista

This is what happens when I’m on a plane and there’s an A24 section in the in-flight entertainment screen. I click on some movie called Problemista that I’ve never heard of and wouldn’t have had I not had five or six hours to kill. The trailer looked whimsical and weird with some sci-fi tinges and, oddly, RZA from Wu-Tang. Frankly, it looked like a Michel Gondry film. A director I thought I really loved and was up-to-date with, but only now realize I haven’t seen a Gondry film since 2008’s Be Kind Rewind. Time flies in the surreal, whimsical world of French directorial craziness, I guess. But this is about this movie’s writer, director and star, Julio Torres. Clearly a guy who has drawn inspiration from Gondry and Terry Gilliam and even some of the twee, diorama quirks of a Wes Anderson. An impressive and interesting milieu to be sure.

I will admit that I thought Torres was about 18-23 based on his appearance. So, my admiration of his pluck in creating this film was seen through the lens of a “kid” making this piece of somewhat bizarro art. Turns out he’s actually 38. Good skin routine, I guess. While that doesn’t change my opinion of the movie overall, it does certainly lessen my enthusiasm for discovering some sort of wonderkind. Regardless, I had a movie to watch. One that I knew next to nothing about other than it was going to be quirky. Which I suppose is an A24 trait. I was also curious how this relative newcomer would use a veteran like Tilda Swinton. In a role that turned out to be pretty unhinged. I imagine she read the script and was excited that they were just going to let her cook. And cook she does, just chewing up scenes like a wacky, crazy-eyed Pac-Man (who I know doesn’t have eyes). A woman who has a really unhealthy obsession with FileMaker Pro.

But let’s back up for a second. Torres plays Alejandro, a young immigrant from El Salvador, who has moved to the US to pursue his dream of becoming a toy designer. We see his magical early life in the jungle, living with his artist mother who creates an imaginary world for him that looks like part Pee-wee’s Playhouse and part some combination of Alice in Wonderland and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Despite her attempt to place him in this bubble, she has recurring dreams about him being lost and alone. Instead, as an adult, he ends up in Bushwick working for a cryogenic lab for humans that on the surface seems like a scam, but at least gets him sponsored for his work visa. He basically sits there all day in a drab room watching an inert tube with a frozen artist inside (RZA), brainstorming ideas for his toys and working up his application for a Hasbro internship.

His ideas are… not good. And I’m unsure if that’s supposed to be the point, or if the film’s perspective is that his ideas are actually really clever. The issue is all his ideas are like “It’s a Barbie with her fingers crossed behind her back” or “It’s a Cabbage Patch Doll with funny cell phone messages on her cell phone.” In other words, there’s nothing original, just it’s a toy that already exists, but with a weird twist to it that no child would ever get or care about. It’s funny to us as viewers, but not something that would ever get him a job. Granted, Alejandro is supposed to be awkward and relatively odd. His affect is flat, he toe walks, always wears a backpack and constantly has an Alfalfa sprout of hair sticking off his head. Anyhow, he eventually screws up at work, gets fired and has 30 days to find a new sponsorship or he’ll get deported back to El Salvador. Obviously putting his long-shot chance at the coveted Hasbro internship in jeopardy — because the Hasbro site can’t be accessed outside the US.

Enter Elizabeth (Swinton), the wife of the artist whose frozen body Alejandro was watching over. She’s a (former?) art critic who one might generously call eccentric, but in reality is kind of a crazy asshole. She takes on Alejandro as an assistant/gofer to help her organize her husband’s paintings to put together a retrospective of his egg paintings. Literal paintings of eggs. With her frantic nature, crazy hair and make-up, erratic behavior and paranoid delusions, she’s very clearly a bad choice for Alejandro to rely on to be his eventual sponsor, but he has limited options. He tries to manage her moods, her flakiness and her penchant for flying off the handle about just about everything while keeping her on track to sign his sponsorship papers. Alejandro gets increasingly desperate as his deportation looms and Elizabeth spirals. To the point he’s forced to do some pretty cringy stuff — especially for a character who is presumably supposed to be neurodivergent at some level. The two have a weird, mother/son, mentor and almost demented friendship thing going on that becomes increasingly co-dependent and, ultimately, kinda, sorta sweet. But also instructional for both of them.

I’m still trying to digest the themes of this film. On the one hand there is social commentary about the immigration system of the US. The absurdity of it. The stupidity of it. The banking industry also takes a hit — but, honestly, that felt like more like Torres just doing his best Curb bit. But it’s also about the objectivity and subjectivity of art. And redemptive arcs for everyone. Alejandro teaches Elizabeth to be more thoughtful and forgiving. She teaches him how to be a crazy New Yorker American who demands what he wants. Same same. Honestly, the whole thing does feel a bit like a a show piece for Swinton to be wacky, but I suppose that’s not a bad thing. The visual language can feel a little derivative at times, but is still pretty promising if he continues down this surrealistic road. I can’t say I really understood what was going on here, but somehow I still enjoyed it as much as a straight white guy of a certain age could enjoy a film like this. It wasn’t made for me, but plane rides make me do weird shit.