Vague Visages’ Problemista review contain minor spoilers. Julio Torres’ 2023 movie features himself, Tilda Swinton and RZA. Check out the VV home page for more film reviews, along with cast/character summaries, streaming guides and complete soundtrack song listings.

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In Julio Torres’ 2019 HBO special My Favorite Shapes by Julio Torres, the former Saturday Night Live writer walks the audience through a conveyor belt that brings him exactly what the title promises. Most of his “favorite shapes” are toys and trinkets — little marvels to be held in his hands, turned over, touched and given elaborate backstories. There’s Krisha, a McDonalds nugget figurine, and “a sphere, who you may recognize for her current role as a Ferrero Rocher chocolate.” At first glance, the special seems too cute but ultimately feels like an hour with a singular human being; someone who sees the world in a genuinely idiosyncratic and adorably earnest way. My Favorite Shapes by Julio Torres is mesmerizing.

Torres wrote, directed and stars in Problemista, a new film from A24. He plays Alejandro “Ale” Martinez, an immigrant from El Salvador who dreams of being a toymaker. The protagonist has trouble finding a job because he thinks “toys these days are wonderful, but they are too preoccupied with fun.” Problemista feels at first like an evolution of the aforementioned HBO special, an excuse to rattle off some quirky toy ideas that each contain a world of their own, like “a doll that’s kind of like a Barbie except she has her fingers crossed behind her back… sure to add intrigue to any dream house.” There’s even a recurring narrative device where Alejandro calls home and talks to his mother (as Torres does in his HBO special).

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After Ale has been turned down from his dream job at Hasbro and fired from a gig at a cryogenic facility, he needs to find work within 30 days to keep his visa status compliant. Thankfully, he links up with Elizabeth (Tilda Swinton), the wife of a cryogenically-frozen artist named Bobby (RZA). Because the woman can no longer afford to keep her husband on ice in an “archival” space, she offers to hire Ale on a freelance basis to keep track of her partner’s paintings, which are all depictions of eggs. Desperate for work, Ale agrees.

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The joy of Problemista comes from the specificity of its humor, as every other line reveals another new shade of Torres’ enchanting window on the world, with each phrasing choice another morsel to marvel over. Elizabeth, for example, is the kind of desperately mundane villain whose phone flashlight is always on. Swinton is dialed into the humor in Torres’ script, finding laughs in things like the way her character manages to indicate the parenthetical when she says the name of her husband’s favorite painting, “Blue (Egg on Yellow Satin).” See also: the way Elizabeth holds her computer mouse, clutching it in a hand contorted like a claw. Swinton’s character loves nothing more than to raise her voice at customer service workers, haranguing anyone and everyone until she gets her way. Elizabeth could’ve come off like a caricature in Problemista, but in Swinton’s hands, she’s a recognizable woman who simply believes the world owes her.

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Ale and Elizabeth enter into a fascinating sort of kinship in Problemista, each recognizing a similar loneliness in the other. Torres is a talented writer and comedian, and he’s a great actor, too. His performance is mostly reactive, which can be hard to pull off. He’s often just absorbing information from other characters, with Ale just standing by as he tries to keep up with Elizabeth and her sassy gay assistant, Brigham (James Scully). Nevertheless, Torres imbues Ale with a warm humanity that one can’t help but root for; the character is just as intriguing when he’s watching other people as he is while standing up for himself.

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There are plenty of whimsical filmmaking touches in Problemista, too. Ale envisions Elizabeth as a dragon whose eyes sometimes glow red, and there are Michel Gondry-esque flights of DIY fancy that take place in a makeshift cave. The protagonist also dips into Craigslist for some quick cash, and the frightening maw of that site is given human form in a being played by Larry Owens. In Problemista, Craigslist is reimagined as a mystical deity presiding over a world made of secondhand castoff items, promising one-off gigs like “Cleaning boy. Kink.” Torres is clearly a director with a vision, and thanks in large part to production design by Katie Byron, his debut feature looks fantastic.

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When Problemista moves into its final act — as the ticking clock of Ale’s visa deadline collides with Elizabeth’s scattershot approach to mounting a show of her husband’s work — the resolution seems a bit too pat. The lessons learned are clear, and some characters shift their perspectives a bit too quickly. There’s more going on than that, though, as Problemista isn’t only a meditation on the “American Dream,” but also an incisive critique of how immigrants are expected to navigate unfathomable bureaucratic challenges for a chance to work and produce, all the while having to flatten their individuality. Torres’ resolution could be dismissed as simplistic, but it’s actually an exercise in wish-fulfillment.

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For that reason, the too-easy ending isn’t what I’ll remember from Problemista. The movie lives and sings from moment to moment, with constantly surprising morsels around every turn, just like how the conveyor belt from Torres’ HBO special keeps bringing him new shapes to show. Hopefully, the SNL alum will keep showing us shapes like Problemista for a long time to come. After all, as Torres says at the beginning of his HBO special, “If I don’t, I don’t know that anyone else would.”

Eric Langberg (@MrEAnders) is a Rotten Tomatoes-accredited freelance critic whose work has appeared in IndieWire, Slashfilm, Bright Wall/Dark Room and more. Eric also runs the Medium publication Everything’s Interesting, because he believes that every film can tell us something about the world, or about movies, or about ourselves.

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