Rating: R | Runtime: 104 minutes
Release Date: March 22nd, 2024 (USA)
Studio: A24
Director(s): Julio Torres
Writer(s): Julio Torres

The databases are out of sync!

How do you slay the dragon? By becoming the dragon. Elizabeth (Tilda Swinton) was trying to teach Alejandro (Julio Torres) this lesson from the start by giving him the blueprint to her insanity. It’s just tough to see the unearned confidence of white women as a potential tool to be used by yourself when you’re currently falling victim to its power. That’s the thing about desperation, though. Yes, it forces you to buckle to the pressures and anxieties of life by sacrificing your own dignity. But, for the truly desperate who’ve already lost themselves, it also provides the no-shits-left-to-give mentality necessary to turn the tables.

Torres’ (he also writes and directs) Problemista is a wonderfully zany expression of the frustrating and often impossible task of being seen in America when you’re not Elizabeth’s particular shade of bitch. Alejandro’s Salvadoran is victim to a system that’s quite frankly apathetic to his plight. It does the bare minimum to pat itself on the back for supplying immigrants the potential of the American Dream without actually setting up any infrastructure to make it possible as more than the result of a fluke accident for those lucky enough to survive the gauntlet that is the visa process.

Alejandro can’t stay in America without a sponsor, but no one will sponsor him unless they trust his ability to do the job. Unfortunately, he can’t get paid until they do sponsor him despite needing a revenue stream to stay long enough to prove they should. So, when Elizabeth offers the opportunity to earn that trust by working pro bono to satisfy her fantasy of giving her cryogenically frozen painter husband (RZA’s Bobby) the solo show he never secured while conscious, the aspiring toy designer jumps at the chance. Alejandro will put up with her nonsense and demean himself with gig jobs on Craigslist (hilariously brought to personified life by Larry Owens). Whatever gets him that signature before his time is up.

The whole endeavor is cast under a sheen of sketch comedy surrealism between a childhood steeped in fable (Catalina Saavedra tried to create a safe environment for her son where imagination trumped reality) and the constant devolution towards nightmarish community theater daydreams of heated interactions with Elizabeth. Alejandro is intuitive, industrious, and determined—traits that ensure he won’t just quit on his dream as well as qualities that allow him to deflect most of the attacks his new boss is used to unleashing with instant and devastating precision. The only question is whether he can delay Elizabeth’s inevitable discovery of his “treachery” until after achieving her goals.

He won’t succeed if he continues to let everyone push him around, though. And that includes Elizabeth. So, he’ll need to adopt her proclivity for melodrama and fabrication to not only secure his future in America, but also to divert her tempestuous temper away from him to do it. Alejandro must slay his dragons, so to speak, by utilizing their potent attacks without the self-defeating baggage of their insecurities. That means conquering the job to reacquire Bobby’s paintings to sell. Conquering Elizabeth’s penchant to sabotage her own interests so as not to sabotage his own. And conquering America’s brazenly unfair system of stealing and profiting off the backs of immigrants before kicking them out criminals.

Torres is great in the lead he’s written for himself. The mix of exasperation and excitement is key to endearing Alejandro to us while his deadpan sarcasm towards the troubles that ail him punch up the satirical nature of this bureaucratic nightmare. Having Isabella Rossellini narrate from an omnipresent position lends it a warped fairy tale vibe of a hero in distress. And Swinton steals the show with an unhinged Karen-esque performance so far down the stereotype that other Karens can’t even stand her. Yet she still isn’t as monstrous as the system. In fact, she’s also a victim of it. The way Swinton toes that line between unjustly abhorrent and justifiably embittered is therefore nothing short of genius.

---

(L-R) Tilda Swinton and Julio Torres in PROBLEMISTA; courtesy of A24.