Understanding Julio Torres’ earlier work is the important thing to understanding his characteristic debut “Problemista,” which mixes his love of design, the interior lives of toys, surrealism, and whimsy right into a race towards the clock, the immigration system, and the artwork scene in New York Metropolis. Torres, who wrote and directed the movie, performs Alejandro, a younger man who leaves residence in El Salvador to pursue his goals of constructing toys in “essentially the most aggressive metropolis on this planet.” Whereas ready to pursue his goals at Hasbro, he makes ends meet at a cryogenics facility geared toward artists. Assigned to the frozen artist Bobby (RZA), himself a dreamer who specialised in portray eggs, Alejandro’s paths cross with Bobby’s widow, Elizabeth (Tilda Swinton), a tempestuous artwork critic who’s impolite and unforgiving to only about everybody. Regardless of her horrid conduct, she takes a shine to Alejandro, who jumps on the probability to assist her curate a present of her late husband’s work within the hopes she is going to sponsor him for a visa.
Torres’ Alejandro is a dreamer however not indifferent from actuality. Whereas he could pitch concepts about insincere Barbies, disappointing Slinkys, and Cabbage Patch Dolls posting on social media, he additionally must be a realist when navigating the labyrinthian paperwork that’s the American immigration system, an expertise Torres needed to take care of lower than a decade in the past. His character, like others he’s performed earlier than, acts largely restrained, virtually delicate spoken, besides when Elizabeth manages to get the higher of him. Torres’ efficiency is modest in distinction to his outlandish co-star, virtually Keaton-esque in its somber statement of these round him.
Whereas Swinton could also be higher identified for her ethereal display screen presence, as Elizabeth, she places the “downside” in “Problemista.” Her character is a sharp-tongued chaos monster, making enemies wherever she goes, impolite to folks in her life and strangers alike, and ruthless to anybody she isn’t happy with, incomes the nickname hydra for the way in which she assaults again with extra questions and indignant criticisms. She’s paranoid, holds grudges, and outdated beliefs like “Filemaker Professional is the Cadillac of spreadsheets,” or leaves her cellphone gentle on as a result of persons are afraid to right her since she would reasonably battle than pay attention. Swinton is terrifying in her magenta-stained wig and indignant face, the form of strolling pillar of anger you’ll transfer away from on the subway as a result of she appears liable to scold you for one thing. Ultimately, Alejandro sticks up for her and stands by her, maybe a bit out of Stockholm Syndrome, but in addition as a result of he sees one thing of himself in her ardour and ambition. He’s drawn to her combative spirit and understands her in a approach few others do. In distinction, narrator Isabella Rosselini seems solely in voice, calmly recounting Alejandro’s quest as her personal bemused storyteller self, softening Elizabeth’s reducing remarks with exposition.