Awesome ‘Problemista’ tells an off-kilter, winning story
The hero of “Problemista” sees the world differently. He’s an aspiring toy designer named Alejandro who thinks today’s toys are too fun. He proposes a toy truck with a deflating tire to teach kids they’re running out of time.
Alejandro is the creation of Julio Torres, who stars, directs and has written “Problemista,” an off-kilter and very winning movie from a rising artist who thrillingly reflects his own toy maker’s singular, idiosyncratic mind.
It tells the story of Alejandro (Torres), an El Salvadoran immigrant desperate to work for Hasbro but needing to extend his New York stay by getting his work visa approved. His artistic mother back home has tried to shield him from life’s harshness, but he’s alone in a hulking, unfriendly city filled with trash. Isabella Rossellini narrates, adding a starry gravitas.
A twist of fate gets him into the orbit of Elizabeth, the widow of an artist who has been cryogenically frozen by Freezecorp. To afford to keep her husband on ice, she must locate and sell his unloved paintings — a 13-painting series of eggs in different places — and she needs the computer and gofer assistance of Alejandro. He sees this as a potential lifeline.
Tilda Swindon — a Wes Anderson favorite — plays the widow as an unhinged, self-involved, rude and frightening force of nature. She thinks people are screaming at her when she’s the one screaming, she can’t turn her iphone light off, she confronts waiters over tiny things and is banned from Uber. Swindon is in her element here.
These two very opposite souls need each other and not just in a transactional sense. She needs his calmness and vision, and he needs her forthrightness.
Torres displays a Kafkaesque bent as he illustrates the byzantine hurdles of red tape that immigrants face, with Alejandro negotiating a fantasy office maze, like a human rat opening vents to climb into sterile offices. In one scene, an immigrant who is told she must leave the country suddenly disappears — poof!
There is so much rich material in the absurdity: how immigrants and artists crave to be seen, how modern systems eat up people, how we try to cheat death and how technology doesn’t live up to its promise. The movie even speeds more than 300 years into the future. In that cool future, we’re pretty certain they’ll be talking about the big directorial debut of a talented filmmaker. Torres is just starting to toy with us.
“Problemista,” an A24 release, is rated R for “sexual content and some language.” Running time: 104 minutes. Three and a half stars out of four.