Saturday Night Live has its share of strange presences over the years: Andy Kaufman, Jack Handey, Robert Smigel, all left their mark with their strange, very specific, but also very funny senses of humor. Julio Torres left his mark a few years ago, going down a Papyrus rabbit hole and finding, um, creative interns working on Barbie’s Instagram. Torres finally leaves the hobbit holes of late night SNLdom with his own film, Problemista. Thankfully, his gift for 5 minute lunacy translates wonderfully to movie length. Hopefully this is the start of something special!
Torres writes, directs, and stars here as Alejandro, an immigrant from El Salvador. While his artistic mother Dolores (Catalina Saavedra) remains behind working on her projects, Alejandro is in trouble in New York. After failing to land his dream job at a toy company, he’s let go from his current job…which was sponsoring his citizenship. With only a month to get a job before he’s deported, Alejandro crosses paths with Elizabeth (Tilda Swinton), an artist/entrepreneur whose husband (RZA) Alejandro had recently curated art for. Desperate to showcase her departed husband’s egg based paintings, Elizabeth makes a deal with Alejandro: create a gallery to show off/sell her husband’s work, and she’ll sponsor his visa so he can stay in the US.
When you hear about the “Immigrant Experience” at the movies, the films tend to be dire, straightforward dramas that plunge the depths of human sadness. But NOTHING about Julio Torres is straightforward. His unique mind makes Problemista come alive, via filtering the a day to day life of an immigrant through an artist’s kaleidoscope. An example: in the dour immigrant movie like the Dardennes’s Tori Et Lokita, we see the kids hustle from non legal employment gig to gig to scrounge as much money as they can in the bleakest ways possible. For Alejandro? He’s entered the internet world, and literally talks to Craiglist (Larry Owens), who tells him of the various things he can do for $$$$. Those dark undercurrents of immigrant struggles are still there, but they’re offset entertainment wise by Torres’s unique mixture of strange and funny storytelling grounded by emotional honesty. This creative license lets Torres use powerful imagery, visuals, and set design to show everyone how his mind navigates the legal and financial complexities of trying to simply live out your dream of being a Nathan Fielder like toy salesman for Hasbro.
But writing is Julio Torres’s strength. Problemista proves he can carry a movie too. I imagine Alejandro, an El Salvadorian immigrant who moves to New York City, is well within his realm of understanding, as he’s probably had all this in his head anyways. Torres’s smartest investment was nailing the Alejandro walk, one of the great movie walkers I’ve seen in recent memory that basically sets up everything you need to know about Alejandro. Walks are one thing: that doesn’t mean he can hold his own against the great Tilda Swinton, giving an incredible spin on a certain type of New York cultural elite. Thankfully, Torres acquits himself well, using Alejandro’s initial meekness and inquisivity to bounce perfectly off of the larger than life Elizabeth, as she prattles on while he tries to keep up. Tilda, the pro that she is, masterfully navigates the tight rope of making the entitled hot mess of a person someone Alejandro would admire and detest, minute to minute.
By the end, Problemista feels like the start of something new. Rarely does a new voice leave an impression like the one Julio Torres did with this movie, here’s hoping this one does well enough that he gets the chance to make a couple more of these. Or at least, he gets the chance to write a few more of these: I’d love maybe something like “Torres’s Immigrant Tales” where we get a new movie about a new specific type of immigrant to the US. Or he can go back to write SNL sketches fixating on other fonts. Either way, keep up the good work my guy!