Notes From Visa Purgatory

In Problemista, a Salvadoran immigrant in New York, Alejandro (writer/director and star Julio Torres), navigates the Byzantine work-visa system to stay in the country. He dreams of working at the Habro toy company where his strange ideas, like a spring snake in a can that feels bad for scaring you, might become real. Just as a cryogenics company is firing him from his curator job, he meets a spiky, narcissistic art critic, Elizabeth (Tilda Swinton) who might be his patron if he can help organize her chaotic life.

PROBLEMISTA ★★★★ (4/5 stars)
Directed by: Julio Torres
Written by: Julio Torres
Starring: Tilda Swinton, Julio Torres, RZA, Catalina Saavedra, Greta Lee, voice of Isebella Rossellini
Running time: 104 mins

In different hands this might have been an under-the-radar indie drama full of angst and absurd moments, but with a warm message about acceptance and some offscreen gay sex.

But as written and directed by former Saturday Night Live and Los Espookys writer Julio Torres, Problemista checks all those boxes while filtering it all through a thoughtfully arch and magical lens that Torres brought to his previous work.

On SNL, in Los Espookys, and in his solo comedy show My Favorite Shapes, Torres trafficked in moody, but riotously funny pieces about self-aware sinks and princely heirs to chocolate fortunes viewed through magic amulets.

There aren’t magic amulets in Problemista, but there’s a fearful forest monster, a haunted FileMaker Pro database, and a brief glimpse of pastel-colored future, among other flights of fancy.

It might sound too twee by half, but Torres grounds all his work in relatable emotions and, often, an underlying somberness. That’s the case in Problemista, Torres’ debut film, which finally gets a theatrical release after a year’s delay caused by union strikes. For those expecting something as wacky and joke-driven as the director’s stand-up comedy or Los Espookys, Problemista might be a bit of a letdown. Despite its big visual flourishes, like a cave-dwelling, kaleidoscopic personification of Craigslist (Larry Owens) and a Kafka-inspired block maze that represents the immigration system, the film mostly traffics in subtle humor. It’s also more empathetic than it needs to be, even toward its hydra-villain of a protagonist/antagonist with Swinton’s character, and to immigration caseworkers that it could have  portrayed as unsympathetic bureaucrats.

Torres focuses mostly on the relationship between the plucky Alejandro, who treats everyone with kindness and has a literal bounce in his step, and Elizabeth, a fire breather attacking everyone and everything in her path. Alejandro struggles to understand Elizabeth even past the point where she might help him as a visa sponsor.

There are a few stumbles of a first-time auteur: a subplot involving Alejandro’s artist mother back home (Catalina Saavedra) feels both underplotted and distracting from the main story threads, and a scene marking Alejandro’s lowest point as he struggles for money belongs in a whole different movie.

But Torres gets a lot of Problemista right, from the casting of Swinton, who perfectly embodies the Difficult Woman role, to brief, lovely scenes featuring RZA as a dying artist, and the great Greta Lee, who makes a feast out of a tiny amount of screen time. Torres presents Alejandro as an innocent who can’t fight the system with love and logic, and who learns that being a little difficult (as the title suggests) can open doors that kindness cannot. If the humor seems more toned down than his past output, it may be because Torres is going for a more vulnerable storytelling approach that values emotional truth over belly laughs.

That’s OK. Problemista is promising, a statement piece from a unique comedic voice we should all be watching closely.