Alejandro has no time to waste. Unless he finds a job very quickly in New York, he will lose his work visa and be sent back to El Salvador. An aspiring toy designer, the young man thinks he’s in luck when Elizabeth hires him as an assistant. Widow of a little-known painter awaiting future glory in a cryogenic tube, Elizabeth tasks Alejandro with setting up an exhibition. Apparently simple, this mandate is complicated by Elizabeth’s somewhat frightening temperament. Full of offbeat humor, magical realism and keen observations, Problemista turns out to be an enchanting migratory tale.
Fairytale is the right word here, as director, producer and screenwriter Julio Torres, who also stars, opens his film with a prologue rich in fairy tale imagery and terminology.
Throughout, Torres brings her Alejandro into a symbolic cave where childhood fears take on, in adulthood, more prosaic appearances, like this employee of a bank with questionable practices.
In this regard, Torres punctuates his fanciful story with very accurate socio-political comments, such as this tirade addressed, precisely, to said bank. “Your policies are designed to trap people who have no recourse or right to make mistakes,” he says.
This short passage is representative of a film which, under the guise of satire and eccentricity, makes a serious point.
Screenwriter at Saturday Night Live, Julio Torres knows how to spot the comic potential in any situation, as he repeatedly demonstrates in this second feature. Its depiction of a government bureaucracy that is fundamentally surreal in its nonsense is the occasion for a brilliant visual analogy worthy of Brazilby Terry Gilliam.
From the great Swinton
In addition to the tyranny of immigration, Torres incorporates a myriad of sub-themes and concerns, such as the soaring cost of living, or the fatuity of the contemporary art industry.
In this regard, Torres shows how a suitably tortured artist often needs to have at his side a conciliatory, empathetic and patient person to the point of self-oblivion.
This explains this, Tilda Swinton is full of paradoxes in the role of Elizabeth, this imperious, temperamental, unfair, paranoid, impossible boss… but also helpless, touching, generous, lucid, in short, furiously human. The character would not look out of place in a Pedro Almodóvar film. From the great Swinton.
As for Julio Torres, who, at 37, barely looks 20, he is basically like Candide. He will learn life in the lap of the one who turns out to be a good fairy disguised as a dragon.