Problemista: Under the Laughs, Casting a Cold Eye on the America Dream
By Liz Braun
Rating: B
In Problemista, a boy from El Salvador grows up and finds his way to New York City, a dream come true that rapidly becomes a nightmare as he navigates the U.S. immigration system.
A sharp satire from SNL grad Julio Torres and starring Torres and Tilda Swinton, Problemista unfolds like a fairytale, complete with narration from Isabella Rossellini, strange visions and impossible quests and even a many-headed hydra.
Torres plays Alejandro, the son of Dolores (Catalina Saavedra), an artist who dearly loves him and supports his life of the imagination.
Alejandro has come to New York from El Salvador to design toys for Hasbro — his dream job — but the job does not materialize.
Instead, to make ends meet, Alejandro works for a cryogenics place, and personally watches over the frozen remains of Bobby (RZA), an artist who only ever painted eggs.
The soft-spoken Alejandro has to work to maintain a visa and stay in America; when he gets fired after a mishap with Bobby’s frozen self, he has 30 days to find another job and a visa sponsor or go home.
Alejandro ends up working with Bobby’s barking-mad widow, Elizabeth (Tilda Swinton), a former art critic whose level of aggression is always turned to 11.
Alejandro and Elizabeth decide they will try to put together an exhibit of 13 of Bobby’s paintings.
It’s a hideous job — Elizabeth is demanding, misguided, and bonkers — and Alejandro is a doormat; numerous obstacles arise.
Simultaneously, Alejandro continues his terrible trudge through the impossible mess that is the immigration system, an updated myth of Sisyphus illustrated by Alejandro’s imagination — rows and rows of hourglasses rapidly emptying as his time runs out, other immigrants literally vanishing before his eyes as their visas expire, everything bad compounded by Alejandro’s poverty.
It doesn’t sound much like it, but Problemista is a comedy and a savage send-up of much of what America holds dear. Torres’ absurdist humour underpins the storytelling.
There are wonderful visual jokes throughout; allegedly desirable New York is ugly and the streets are full of garbage, for example, but in that garbage are the colourful bits of art and whimsical children’s things people have tossed out. And there are laugh-out-loud digs at the art world and at bureaucrats.
Still, Problemista can be viewed as an indictment of contemporary America. How else to explain the brief, anxiety-provoking “comic” scenes scattered throughout, such as: how the banks screw the poor, how easily one of Alejandro’s toy designs is stolen, how in a country with 42 million Spanish-speaking citizens nobody at the immigration lawyer’s office speaks Spanish.
Torres has said parts of Problemista are semi-autobiographical, based on his own experiences getting a visa several years ago. So, it’s funny ‘cause it’s true, right?
Problemista. Written and directed by Julio Torres. Starring Julio Torres, Tilda Swinton, RZA, Laith Nakli. In theatres March 22.