It says something damning about today how actual innovators get shunted to the side or swallowed by corporate structure; where someone with enough money can simply buy their way into a position where they absorb undeserved accolades, as if imagination were a transferable attribute. But Problemista's protagonist Alejandro (writer/director/star Julio Torres) is a gifted designer of unexpected toys, and the way to get that uniquity across to the largest audience is by playing the corporate game. (This may also be offhandedly addressing the structure at Saturday Night Live, where Torres worked from 2016 to 2021.) So until he can get a foot in the door at Hasbro, this imaginative Salvadoran immigrant has to tread water overseeing the cryogenically frozen body of artist Bobby Asencio (RZA, who is exceptional). It’s in this capacity that he also encounters Asencio’s wife Elizabeth (La Tilda herself), and chaos ensues.
Torres’ previous body of work (his HBO series Los Espookys, children’s book I Want to Be a Vase, comedy special My Favorite Shapes and a staggering array of top-tier sketches from his time writing at SNL*) is a testament to a rich and boundless imagination. He has a preternatural gift for looking at all manner of situations and seeing in them the wrinkle, the fault line, the pea below 40 mattresses that caused a fracture. Equal parts whimsy, gay semiotics, absurdist psychology and revelations of difficult truths, Torres is unlike the vast majority of voices out there at the moment.
The SNL sketch “Wells for Sensitive Boys” seems the apotheosis of much of his work, embodying a love and respect of mothers who defend their queer children with care, wit and insight. It’s the opposite of these hateful parents who want to upend entire systems of learning and science to ensure their progeny remain locked into their own antiquated traditions, and it’s funny because of the commitment to the material but also because it’s something recognizable that so often remains unsaid.
To that sketch’s iconic Emma Stone (a producer on Problemista), he adds a pair of iconic maternal figures herein: Alejandro’s artist mother Dolores (played by Catalina Saavedra, who walked away with the spiky, provocative Rotting in the Sun last year) is complemented by Swinton’s Elizabeth, a critic/shakti/paranoid hustler incarnation of everything complicated and thorny about white women. Dolores is an acclaimed artist in El Salvador, working on a massive outdoor piece but also worried about the paths that art has led her kid on, and Elizabeth’s blunt-force collisions with the world around her at first seem object lessons in how not to do things. Both are absolutely essential to who Alejandro is and who he becomes. (There’s also an unspoken, heartbreaking through line about how the younger generations have had to view art as something to be monetized because there’s simply no other way).
Quotable dialogue and the fluffiest of cringe abound, as well as trenchant social analysis of how the modern world is designed to grind dreams down into a fine powder. This is a righteously angry film about the dehumanizing processes of corporatized bureaucracy that everyone undergoes every day, regardless of national provenance or willingness to engage. It’s educational about the process of getting an American work visa, but beyond that it surgically diagnoses the processes (bank fees, dishonest boilerplate, online-only interfaces) that affect everyone who isn’t too rich to give a shit.
“The thorn that protects the rose” is how Elizabeth refers to herself, acknowledging her sharp edges but also the way that being a critic is built upon nurturing new voices in rough waters. But truthfully, Torres makes the deliberate choice not to let us get too familiar with Elizabeth’s aesthetics, and it’s probably for the best. If her eye is unfailing, where’s the dramatic tension there? I certainly wasn’t expecting to be called out in such a capacity. But it’s to Torres’ credit that no one could watch this film and think it was anti-critic. If anything, it gets deep into the nitty-gritty about the purposes critics serve in a productively symbiotic relationship with the creative communities. But these jeweled needles do draw some blood, and difficult lessons go down easier when delivered by Tilda Swinton.
Her hair (malignant bangs with a dye job that’s itching to start a fight), outfits and demeanor are a loving caricature, all Memphis colors and Dynasty shoulder pads; there’s a little Edina Monsoon to be found as well. Elizabeth is a glorious horror — and too much. Her attitude toward, well, everyone around her is obscene, except for the times when it sadly proves useful. (It is entirely possible that those who delight in Karenity will learn the wrong lessons from this film, but if it means they’re watching partially subtitled films maybe that’s a trade worth making?)
But we see Elizabeth the way that Alejandro (and Torres) sees her — both a subject to be studied but also a signifier many times over. She is a living aftermath, and he can’t help but see the many tiny shifts and choices that led to who she is today; she allows him to understand his own art more clearly. It’s a gift that Problemista offers, as well as the peerless Isabella Rosselini’s narration and a recurrent turn by Search Party’s Larry Owens as the physical incarnation of Craigslist, a protean being built on several strata of economic exploitation with clothes that shift like AI.
The emotions run deep in this film — the deep and unexpected sadnesses of impasse, the madness that can come from loving an artist, the messy unresolved nightmarish interiors, the alienation and flailing about of just trying to get by in a world that at some times feels like a mean collaboration between Jacques Tati and Roy Andersson, the joy that comes from even the most short-lived of triumphs. This is a film that understands the dramatic tension of the Roosevelt Island tram in a way that has eluded the movies since Emanuelle in America. This is a film that understands that cruelty and care can be two facets of the same blade.
