PROBLEMISTA: MORE FAIRY TALES PLEASE!

 I have just finished watching what I can only describe as one of the most charming, funniest, moving and utterly delightful movies I've seen this year.  Salvadoreños actor, writer, stand-up comic and now director, Julio Torres knocks his debut feature film straight out of the park. 

I had only read one review, by someone who attended the premiere at the San Diego Latino Film Festival began his review: "The crowd loved it . . . I hated it," before launching into every minute detail that made him feel this way.  These included Torres' face, Torres' walk, Torres' voice, the character Torres played . . . and extended to co-star Tilda Swinton "a little of her goes a long way" the very premise and look of the film.  He also takes a major swing at the narration by Isabella Rossellini ("annoying") claiming it doesn't make sense to use her as the film is critical of nepotism in the arts and Rossellini "is a nepo baby."  WTF?  I became even more anxious and excited to see what could provoke this off the hook level of hatred toward a movie. 

Having now seen it, I feel compelled to make the assumption this guy is a homophobic racist, a bigot, a gung-ho Nationalist "Go Capitalism" sorta guy . . . you know . . . like a Trump supporter (yeah, I went there).  

The narrative begins in El Salvador where the child Alejandro lives with his artist mother who creates a magical world for him to live in, with bright CInderella castles but also a dangerously dark cave with a spooky red-eyed monster. Alejandro has a dream and we flash forward to present day Manhattan where, on a limited visa, he tries to land a job at Hasbro to become a great inventor of toys. He's taken a job at a cryogenic facility that works only with dead artists, and after a mishap involving the accidental unplugging of a cord he is dismissed and with only 30 days left to find a sponsor to remain in the country, has a fateful intervention with Elizabeth, the widow of an artist (played in flashbacks by RZA) who employs him (sort of) to help her find her husband's paintings and curate a show for a major gallery.   

As Elizabeth, Tilda Swinton gives one of her strangest, most magnificently fierce performances: a harpy, a "hydra" and the red-eyed monster of Alejandro's fairy tales. We encounter the disastrous attempts of the pair to collect the paintings, deal with the real world both Elizabeth's and Alejandro's.  

Alejandro is an odd duck. Always fearful but with a blank almost smile on his face to hide his feelings his anxiety with the world becomes manifest in his speech and his very (very) peculiar way of walking. It's kind of an ancient Geisha-style walk that seems as if his legs were tied together at the knees. He kind of glides everywhere.  I know this irritated not just that one critic but others yet it entirely endeared me to this kid to the point where I thought, "I could adopt a kid like Alejandro."  I'm not kidding.  

Torres makes clear in statements (which I read afterwards) that Problemista contains a good dose of autobiographically based anecdotes of his experience as an immigrant in the U.S.  We witness very real problems with a housing crisis, racism, the ramifications and pseudo-violence of financial insecurity and (thank you Bank of America!) job instability in the form of thankless jobs and sex work from Craig's List all among the the myriad hoops of the immigrant experience many if not all encounter.  These difficulties are made manifest in brilliantly filmed vignettes of Alejandro crawling up into, across, and out of an M.C. Escher-inspired nightmare that . . . well it just works. Trust me.  

I won't go into further story details . . .but the fantasy and fairy tale elements, both dark and comical provide a surreal vista for this absolutely magical tale. 

All of the technical and artistic elements collide and combine in the most beautiful surrealist and sometimes mystical ways. Robert Ouyang Rusli's score is appropriately atmospheric, Fredrik Wenzel's cinematography is brilliant in every frame, the set design which features a   

I'm seeing now reviews have been decidedly mixed with polarization of "loved it" and "hated it" . . . so it's "one of those."  Personally, I can't wait to watch it again.