Alejandro (Torres) is a would-be toy designer making an attempt to get into an internship program at Hasbro. In the meantime, he’s been working at a cryogenics company and appears on his option to acquiring a piece visa till one thing goes awry and he’s summarily fired. His solely choice is to start working for a temperamental artwork critic named Elizabeth (Tilda Swinton), who agrees to signal his visa papers so long as he performs a sequence of superficially easy however more and more Kafkaesque duties having to do with updating the database of her late husband’s work with archival software program known as FileMaker Professional.
Alejandro’s travails in making an attempt to placate Elizabeth type the middle of “Problemista,” which is spiked with moments of magical realism (Larry Owens portrays a terrifying, seductive personification of Craigslist) and Torres’s personal metaphorical creativeness. He provides visible language to the unattainable immigration paperwork in a mazelike construction of bins, hatches and file cupboards; at one level, when Alejandro is assembly together with his immigration lawyer and idly says, “We’ll see,” the lawyer jots it down excitedly, saying, “That’s an important slogan for us!”
One other recurring motif in “Problemista” is an hourglass, which seems on-screen to strengthen Alejandro’s race towards time. One of many movie’s best strengths lies in how Torres communicates stress, whether or not by the hands of the apathetic strangers who management his destiny with one mouse click on, or the narcissistic, egocentric, operatically unreasonable bosses who’ve made for can-you-top-this contests since completely happy hours had been invented. One in every of Torres’s most refined and poignant results is having unlucky folks merely vaporize into skinny air when their time is up.
Alejandro is decided to flee that destiny, and “Problemista” is at its most spikily dynamic when it’s centered on his fraught relationship with Elizabeth, a doubtlessly inventory character that Swinton infuses with fiery, fearsome hauteur. Whereas Alejandro is recessive and meek — Torres performs him with a downcast, socially awkward frown and a bouncy trot that provides to the air of dreamy winsomeness — Elizabeth is a human pressure majeure, all magenta hair and outsize shoulder pads. Anybody this pathologically self-centered, passive-aggressive and manipulative would often be too loathsome to love, however Swinton finds the humor and vulnerability even in her most outlandish habits. (Catalina Saavedra performs Dolores, Alejandro’s artist mom, who’s in her personal type of artistic limbo again dwelling.)
Torres’s storytelling can appear saggy and digressive at instances, however “Problemista” lastly turns into one thing better than its elements. (Isabella Rossellini supplies the fractured-fairy-tale narration.) The dream sequences, flashbacks and sidetracks don’t at all times succeed, and Torres’s absurdist humor is hit-or-miss. However “Problemista” seems to be much less an indictment than a warmhearted homage — to the braveness it takes to depart dwelling, the even better braveness it takes to look at our youngsters go away dwelling, and the tough, demanding, dumbfoundingly assured individuals who train the remainder of us tips on how to take up area, ask for extra and by no means even consider apologizing.
“Problemista” is much from good, however it’ll hit dwelling for anybody in want of reassurance that irrational hope can overcome much more irrational expertise.
R. At space theaters. Incorporates some profanity and sexual content material. In English and Spanish with subtitles. 104 minutes.
