Problemista *** (2024, Tilda Swinton, Julio Torres, Ronald Peet, Kelly McCormack, Paul Cooper) – Classic Movie Review 12,856

Julio Torres’s quirky 2024 surreal comedy film Problemista has its problems but it sure is a Tilda Swinton tour-de-force.

New York, it’s a wonderful town, well not if you are a young immigrant from El Salvador, apparently.

Julio Torres stars in his own 2024 comedy film Problemista as Alejandro, a pleasant young aspiring toy designer from El Salvador, struggling to bring his unusual ideas to life in New York City. After he loses his toy film job and his US work visa starts to run out, a freelance job assisting the erratic art-world outcast Elizabeth (Tilda Swinton) becomes his only hope to stay in the US and realise his dreams.

Writer/ director Julio Torres’s Problemista (2024) is a very strange film indeed, an extremely weird comedy that is very welcome but in the event only just about holds together, though thankfully it does. The performances are better than the film, with Swinton full on in a tour-de-force as the crazy art-world outcast and Torres somehow managing to score strongly against her outrageous turn.

The problemista is mainly the screenplay. More wit and clarity in the writing, as well as more consistent drive and dynamism in the direction, might have made this a classic, but it’s good enough to be going on with, watchable, oddly appealing and mostly quite a lot of fun. It’s a shame that there’s a much better film trying to get out here, but these kinds of comedies are hard to do. There’s no real story to speak of, just a series of comedy ideas, fairly loosely and randomly strung together, with themes and ideas to give it some coherence.

The voice of Isabella Rossellini is an eccentric, though pleasing choice as the voice of the film’s narrator, just as you would expect.

What accent is Tilda supposed to be doing? It’s all over the place, like her game-for-anything performance. Both Swinton and Torres have obviously attended the Ministry of Funny Walks, apparently competing with each other to see who could come up with the funniest way of walking, and that never gets dull. Actually, there’s never a dull moment in Problemista. Much of it is fresh and funny.

Released: 2024-03-01.

Genre: Comedy.

Cast: Tilda Swinton, Julio Torres, Ronald Peet, Kelly McCormack, Paul Cooper, RZA, James Scully, Catalina Saavedra, Laith Nakli, and the voice of Isabella Rossellini as the narrator.

Duration: 104 minutes.

Country: US.

Production: Fruit Tree.

Julio Torres was born on February 11, 1987 in El Salvador.

© Derek Winnert 2024 – Classic Movie Review 12,856

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com