Problemista, starring Julio Torres and Tilda Swinton, is almost as quirky as Everything Everywhere All At Once, Jen Shieff says. Image / A24 Films
Problemista (R, 104 mins). Streaming for rent on Apple TV, Google TV and Neon Rentals.
Directed by Julio Torres.
Reviewed by Jen Shieff.
Problemista is whimsical, startling, hilarious, highly original and almost as quirky as Everything Everywhere All At Once (Kwan and Scheinert, 2022) or Poor Things (Yorgos Lanthimos, 2023).
Alejandro Martinez (writer-director Julio Torres), a cute young guy from El Salvador who walks like a marionette, needs sponsorship if he’s to stay in the USA.
His only hope is completely nutty Elizabeth (Tilda Swinton), who strides into his life when he’s hired by a Manhattan cryogenics company to keep an eye on Elizabeth’s dead artist husband Bobby (rapper RZA) who, when he received a cancer diagnosis, decided to freeze himself.
Alejandro trips over the cord of Bobby’s storage tube, unplugging it, jeopardising not only his job but also Elizabeth’s contract with the cryogenics company.
Problemista takes us into Alejandro’s world, a nightmarish maze that is the US immigration service, a Wes Anderson-ish imaginative world of blind alleyways, claustrophobic cubicles and Escher-like stairways.
With only a month to find a sponsor, running out of money, the sand in a series of giant hourglasses draining away minute by minute, everything seems stacked against Alejandro, his dream to design humorous toys for corporate Hasbro becoming increasingly elusive.
He tries to eke out a living by subletting his bed, and taking a variety of low-paying jobs suggested by a morbidly obese lewd genie-like character called Craiglist (Larry Owens).
Isabella Rossellini narrates in an unruffled voice, as if time is actually on Alejandro’s side.
Meanwhile, back in El Salvador, Alejandro’s loyal adoring mother (Catalina Saavedra), who’s responsible for Alejandro’s over-developed imagination, having given him literally everything he could possibly have dreamed of when he was a small boy, lives for Alejandro’s sporadic phone calls.
Elizabeth tantalises Alejandro with promises to sponsor him, while holding close to her conviction that large sections of the population, possibly including Alejandro, are there merely to serve, and will give you anything you want if you say please.
Always after the unattainable, Elizabeth, a chronically disorganised art critic, is on a mission to make Bobby posthumously famous, not recognising his lack of talent, oblivious to his philandering and not dealing with the main problem: how to unfreeze him; cryogenics hasn’t got as far as the unfreezing stage yet.
Tilda Swinton is magnificent as Elizabeth, with crinkly magenta-coloured hair, huge shoulder pads, a strident walk with a hint of a limp and a West Country accent that doesn’t seem to fit with her appearance, and yet does.
She’s like a flawed overblown character in a Greek myth, but she’s also human, warm towards Alejandro and her gay nephew, seemingly lonely.
Alejandro is perfect as her assistant, brilliant when it comes to locating and marketing Bobby’s egg paintings (go figure), and although he’s completely incapable of organising her records, he pretends to good effect.
It’s ridiculous, full of surprises and fun and nobody comes off badly, not even the US immigration service. Great entertainment.
★★★★
Taupō mum of two Emma Kettlewell was diagnosed with cancer a year ago.