Few gifts from art are richer than the feeling that someone else knows your pain. If you’re unlucky enough to lose someone, be an immigrant, or have artistic ambitions in modern America, Problemista reminds you you’re not alone in your struggles.
In this very personal-feeling film from writer/director Julio Torres (who also stars), Alejandro (Torres himself) is a young immigrant in New York City with the preposterous dream of making weird artsy toys for Hasbro. Think a snake in a can that pops out with a sign on it that says “I’m sorry I was trapped in here and scaring you was the only way out” or a slinky that doesn’t go down stairs by itself. After a clumsy mistake, he loses his job at a cryogenic facility and must find alternative visa sponsorship within 30 days or face being deported.
As it happens, however, on the day he’s fired, Elizabeth (Tilda Swinton, who nails another eccentric), the belligerent spouse of a cryogenically frozen painter comes to complain about a rate hike. Despite her display of spittle-flinging misanthropy, he helps her with an errand, on the completion of which she dangles the possibility of an internship with visa sponsorship at the end of it. That sets up the story: the sponsorship as the golden fleece, and the odyssey in the form of Elizabeth’s loneliness-fueled instability, the harsh realities of being broke in New York, Craigslist gigs of varying degrees of horrific, overdraft fees, and Filemaker Pro.
Known for his work on SNL and Los Espookys, Torres plays Alejandro as a soft-spoken, bright-eyed creative who toddles around almost like a Peanuts character, not quite walking but hopping from foot to foot in a chosen direction. He moves as though he’s a doll being paraded by a child through an elaborate New York-sized playhouse, which makes for uncomfortable comedy when juxtaposed with Elizabeth’s Cruella De Vil temperament and her stooped, wild-eyed gesticulating. The polarity represented by their two personalities creates the movie's energy as the characters slowly develop a weird chemistry and learn from one another in the tradition of other odd-couple classics—like Bad Boys minus the…mostly everything.
Together, they attempt to put on one last exhibit for Elizabeth’s cryogenically frozen husband’s not-very-good art (Bobby, played by RZA, only painted portraits of eggs). But first they must choose which pieces to feature and locate them all, even facing down the task of retrieving one painting from a woman with whom her husband had an affair. This all takes massive feats of Elizabeth-wrangling and pushes them both to the brink (though we get a sense that Elizabeth is always on the brink). It’s here we start to feel, despite the comedy, the weight of the desperation they’re both operating under–the difficulty of being an immigrant on a deadline, the difficulty of being a widow, the difficulty of being a creative person in a world that doesn’t value them much—and we realize that these problems are actually very serious. The simple fact that Torres has made a movie about them that’s also an effective comedy is really impressive.
Tilda Swinton, of course, was made for this role—and honestly any role where she plays someone batshit. Her interactions with her iPad alone could be their own movie. My favorite performance, though—and also my favorite of Torres’s creations for this film—may have been Larry Owens as the quasi-erotic sibilating personification of Craigslist. What a role to have on your IMDb credits, too. Well done, Larry. And let’s not forget the off-screen narration from the inimitable Isabella Rosalini, whose presence in any aspect of life is always a treat.
You may have noticed that a vast chunk of the cinematic landscape these days takes an existing IP (Angry Birds, Wonka, Barbie, Mario Brothers, the list goes on) and applies a narrative to it. Some of them are great, of course, but for every Barbie, there are six Battleships. I think we can agree our world would be better with fewer Battleships and more movies like this one that are personal and original, even if small. Let’s all go see it.
