Problemista
First screened in January 2025
Director: Julio Torres. Cast: Julio Torres, Tilda Swinton, Catalina Saavedra, RZA, Spike Einbinder, Laith Nakli, James Scully, Greta Lee, Larry Owens, Kelly McCormack, Eudora Peterson, Jack P. Raymond, Bardia Salimi, Greta Titelman, Theo Maltz, River L. Ramirez, James Seol, Jason Furlani, Martine Gutierrez, Miles G. Jackson, voice of Isabella Rossellini. Screenplay: Julio Torres. Twitter Capsule:
Plenty of laughs. Foregrounds dilemmas, however oddly, that US film chronically ignores. Room to grow but real promise.
VOR:④
This debut gives me real hopes for Torres's sensibility, his willingness to stretch the art form, and his eye and ear for comic talent.
Problemista makes you wish there were just a bit more stretchiness in the paradigm of the broadly releasable feature film. It's kind of an art project, kind of a standup set, kind of an improv show, kind of a game, kind of a showcase to casting agents who specialize in comedy, kind of an installation (albeit itchy about the kinds of people who patronize installations). It does have a narrative spine, which writer-director-star Julio Torres treats at different times as the most and least important aspect of what he's made. Not everything hangs together, but "hanging together" rarely feels like the principal point, especially when there's so much to savor in the moment-to-moment images, ideas, and especially the laughs. The humor arises from words, from visuals, from performance choices, and from the story's own shambolic structure. Good comedy is rare in U.S. movies, and rarer still is a movie that knows how to be incisively funny in more than one way.
It's curious how some of the weaknesses in Problemista are such close neighbors with its greatest strengths. For example, there's considerable poignancy in the ongoing rapport that tenuous U.S. resident and aspiring toy designer Alejandro (Torres) maintains with his mother Dolores (Catalina Saavedra) back in El Salvador, especially given how many immigrant stories are structured to foreclose those kinds of lasting bonds. That said, Dolores remains a little blurry and Saavedra, a brilliant and resourceful actress, seems a little hemmed-in, despite Problemista again and again and again teeing up single-scene players and much more peripheral characters to make invigorating, crystal-clear impressions. It's not quite obvious what Problemista wants from this character or this relationship, though it's equally palpable that Torres would never have made the movie without this thread.
Similarly, though Torres and Tilda Swinton have collaborated to produce a stunning comic creation in the imperious and loudly self-deluded art harpy Elizabeth—Alejandro's erstwhile employer and potential visa sponsor—the movie ends without quite pulling into focus what Problemista wants to say through these people's encounter, either. Is Torres pointing out how easily aspiring artists, especially in New York, may wind up depending for everything on the most garish and self-absorbed of would-be benefactors? Is the movie asking us to see more in Elizabeth than an impossible/uproarious gorgon, and maybe even empathize with her as another person in an unenviable situation, holding on by a thread? I like that she isn't just an enabler or an antagonist or a flat device of any kind. Still, even an epilogue that seemingly exists to resolve this ambiguity only renders it murkier.
So, I'm mulling some things. But what I'm not mulling is that I had a great time watching Problemista. I admired so many facets of its creativity and its balancing act between chaos and control. I loved seeing Swinton hatch an unexpected chimera of her characters in Julia and Trainwreck. A 40-year patron saint of creative savants of all stripes and sensibilities, Swinton manages to come across at all times as serving, even empowering Torres's hail-Mary artistic enterprise even as she chews scenery with the appetite of 2,000 tragically hip termites. We're leaving this performance out of Supporting Actress ballots this year, while fucking around with wispy propositions like Isabella Rossellini in Conclave? M'kay. (Happily, Rossellini herself brings down the house a few times in Problemista without even appearing, giving perfect deadpan irony as the unseen narrator.)
Praise as well to Problemista for being a species of New York movie that I've never seen before, for squeezing so much juice out of a Filemaker Pro gag, for Catherine George's costume designs (especially Swinton's, but not only hers), for begging comparison to Michel Gondry movies without ever just imitating a Michel Gondry movie, and for those piquant pop-ins from Greta Lee, Spike Einbinder, James Scully, Larry Owens, Greta Titelman, Kelly McCormack, River L. Ramirez, and a host of other comedixns, most of them new to me, who make this extremely Torres-forward movie feel like an ensemble triumph. I'm very excited to see this again. Grade:B
