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PORTSIDE CULTURE

STREAM IT OR SKIP IT: ‘PROBLEMISTA’ ON MAX, JULIO TORRES’
WEARINGLY WEIRD COMEDY ABOUT THE IMMIGRANT EXPERIENCE  
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John Serba
June 29, 2024
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_ A portrait of the byzantine madness of America and its cold,
dispassionate systems regarding the immigrant experience. _

, Photo: A24

 

_Julio Torres writes, directs, produces and stars
in _Problemista_ (now streaming on Max
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a very strange and idiosyncratic and – watch out for this word,
which should only be doled out in the most extreme circumstances –
quirky comedy. The former _Saturday Night Live
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of HBO series _Los Espookys
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with this story of an odd fellow from El Salvador who moved to New
York City to achieve his dream of being a toymaker at Hasbro. Easier
said than done, especially when you consider Tilda Swinton is in this
movie, the only actress I can think of who’d be capable of playing
someone who’d be capable of so casually derailing someone’s dream
of being a toymaker for Hasbro. Additionally, no movie with Tilda
Swinton in it ever goes down easy, and this one is no different._

_PROBLEMISTA [[link removed]]_: STREAM IT OR
SKIP IT?

THE GIST: Alejandro (Torres), or just Ale if you wish, has a cowlick.
You kinda can’t stop looking at it. There it is, twoinging off his
head like a weed that keeps growing out of a crack in the driveway no
matter how many times you pull it or poison it. He also walks funny
and always has a kind of nonplussed blank look on his face and has
ideas for toys that are weird and that he pitches to Hasbro as an
alternative to toys that are actually fun. E.g., a Slinky that
doesn’t walk down stairs and therefore forces children to traverse
the stairs themselves and therefore learn something about
disappointment. Shockingly, his Hasbro application is met with a
rejection letter, forcing him to take a job at a cryogenics company
that freezes humans so they may awaken in the future. We see a video
promoting the facility, and it states that, legally speaking, “this
company provides a form of euthanasia.”

It’s a living, sort of, I guess. Ale is from El Salvador, where his
artist mother seems to have raised him to be a major weirdo –
although, to be fair, almost everyone in this movie is a major weirdo.
The cryo-gig helps Ale maintain his work visa so he doesn’t get
deported, so of course, he trips over a cord and unplugs a
cryo-chamber and gets fired for it, even though he plugged it back in,
although it took too long for him to plug it back in, so who knows if
it really hurt anything, but he gets fired anyway and who knows if
it’s truly justified. Back to the series of escape-room-esque cubes
that Torres uses to illustrate the bureaucracy of the immigration
system, and now Ale has a brief window of time to get another job
before he’s forced to go back to El Salvador. 

This is when Tilda Swinton enters the picture. She plays Elizabeth, an
art critic married to Bobby (RZA), the man in the cryo-chamber whose
cord Ale tripped on. She needs a personal assistant and Ale is her
guy, sort of. She’ll sign his sponsorship that’ll allow him to
stay in the U.S., but only if he helps her put together an exhibition
of Bobby’s paintings (they’re all of eggs, for some reason). The
gig’s easier said than done, because the art world is impenetrable
and snooty, and also, Elizabeth is a maniac who makes highly
unreasonable demands of everyone around her, and screeches at them
like a banshee or harpy until she gets what she wants. There’s no
money in the gig for Ale, at least not yet, so he resorts to
responding to sketchy Craigslist ads to earn money to pay for the tiny
room in the exorbitantly expensive tiny apartment he shares with
lunatic roommates. Meanwhile, tick-tock goes the timer on his
immigration status, and I feel like Ale tying his fate to this awful
tornado-woman probably wasn’t the wisest choice, and is a longshot
avenue for him to eventually achieve his dreams, but for some reason
he feels the need to honor his commitment. This movie really trafficks
in the inexplicable, I tell you.

WHAT MOVIES WILL IT REMIND YOU OF?: _Problemista_ is a bit like
Michel Gondry’s _Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
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with an _Everything Everywhere All at Once
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of that’s-so-random comedy (albeit toned down, thankfully) crossed
with _The Devil Wears Prada
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Lynch ripoff. 

PERFORMANCE WORTH WATCHING: A character in the film describes
Elizabeth as someone who can “bend the rules of time and space,”
and that felt like meta-commentary for Swinton, who full commits to
Torres’ brand of weirdness – and if you’re gonna ask anyone to
fully commit to your brand of weirdness, Swinton should be at the top
of the list. 

MEMORABLE DIALOGUE: One of Ale’s awful Craigslist gigs has him
walking up to randos on the street and saying “Can I ask you a
question about your hair?” while we cringe ourselves to death.

SEX AND SKIN: None.

Photo: HBO

OUR TAKE: _Problemista_ routinely, distractingly reminds us of how
weird it is. Torres deploys so many goofy cutaways, plucky soundtrack
flourishes and Ron Howard-esque narrator interjections (by Isabella
Rossellini!), it’s impossible to fall into any kind of narrative
groove. That’s surely intentional, a reflection of the frustration
one feels as an immigrant chasing whatever they believe the American
dream to be, hurdling one ridiculous incompetency after another. Point
taken, but a movie that so frequently calls attention to itself in an
overtly grating manner runs the risk of – quirk! – alienating its
– quirk! – audience with – quirk! – all of its quirky –
quirk! – asides quickly gets annoying, _just like this very
sentence_. Aren’t I clever?

Granted, the method will work for those who can hang on and ride
Torres’ offbeat wavelength. But for others – especially those who
chafed at the similarly themed and styled nuttiness of _Everything
Everywhere All at Once_ – the film can be a bit much. Torres tends
to forego suggestion in lieu of spoonfed literalism, underscoring and
exclamation-pointing his points as if he’s worried that we’ll get
lost in the nonsensical unlogic of Ale’s travails. The biggest
offender in this narrative is the Elizabeth character, a scathing
caricature of privilege; the filmmaker nearly turns Swinton into a
screeching, feedbacking bullhorn, but the actress often finds a way to
make eardrum-bursting tirades of entitlement at least a little bit
funny. The flip side of that is Torres’ surreal-deadpan acting and
directing mannerisms, where it seems like he wants us to laugh at
something more because it’s off-the-wall weird than legitimately
funny.

The primary disconnect here is in Ale himself. We feel obligated to
care about him because of his unjust situation. I was more emotionally
invested in the _idea_ of giving creative and well-meaning
immigrants a legit shot at the American dream than in the character.
Ale’s heart is swarmed by a bundle of impassive eccentricities. I
liked how he remained calm under pressure, functioning as a foil for
Swinton’s shrill flailing. But I remained at a bit of a remove from
this guy, who’s trapped more in his filmmaker’s wearying vision
than the byzantine madness of America and its cold, dispassionate
systems.

OUR CALL: It’s easier to admire _Problemista_ than to actually
like or enjoy it. SKIP IT.

_John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand
Rapids, Michigan._

* Immigration
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* El Salvador
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* immigrant labor
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