If you’re an artist and you’ve ever had to put a show together, you know how difficult it can be to choose the pieces you want on display. But putting together a show for a not-quite-dead person? Well – that’s near impossible.
That’s the predicament Alejandro (Julio Torres) and Elizabeth (Tilda Swinton) find themselves in throughout “Problemista.” In light of a terminal illness, Elizabeth’s husband Bobby (RZA) recently made the decision to freeze his body, hoping that future science might offer him a cure down the line. In order to continue to pay for Bobby’s cryostasis, Elizabeth wants to put together a show of his work – multiple paintings of giant eggs – and is hounding her new assistant Alejandro about what the structure should be.
Alejandro, who is originally from El Salvador, is our main character and desperately needs Elizabeth to sponsor his work visa. Hence, he puts up with more of her temper and antics than he probably should. Their latest disagreement is over the placement of one of Bobby’s unfinished pieces – Alejandro wants to use the piece at the end of the show, a suggestion that Elizabeth simply cannot fathom. But Alejandro likes the unresolved nature of that ending. It’s messy, sure, erratic, yes. But at the same time, it’s somehow full of hope.
One could use those same words to describe “Problemista,” directed, written by and starring Torres. “Problemista” blooms with inventiveness, using magical realism with a clever, modern sensibility to tell the story of how Alejandro comes into his own. The relationship between Elizabeth and Alejandro forms the center of the film, and the dynamics at play are tangled and complicated in the way that – despite the film’s fantastical bent – real life dynamics often are. But even if Torres’ magical world is laden with obstacles and hardship, there’s always a ray of sunshine waiting to break through the clouds.
Alejandro meets Elizabeth because of Bobby’s attempt to cheat death – he works for the company Bobby used and was assigned to be Bobby’s frozen body’s caretaker. Alejandro’s passion isn’t cryostasis, however. He dreams of being a toymaker, the frozen body gig just a way to pay the bills and keep him in the country until he can land a job at Hasbro. But when a mistake causes him to lose that safety net, a timer starts on losing his visa as well. Elizabeth could be the answer, if she would just stop thinking about herself and her own problems for long enough to sign the paperwork.
Magical realism is an artistic style based in Latin American tradition, and Torres’ world is filled with it from the jump. During a prologue featuring a young Alejandro in El Salvador, safe with his mother in the oasis she has built for him, the child journeys through a cave that leads him to the present day, dumping out in the trash cans of New York City – a child’s pink castle strewn amongst the grimy bags. Alejandro’s troubles often play out in fairytales, an imaginative trick to make things seem not quite as terrible as they actually are. When he has to resort to Craigslist to make money, he finds himself lost in the cluttered lair of a Craigslist monster come to life (Larry Owens). When he argues with Elizabeth over the quality of his assistant work, he dons the armor of a knight and faces off against an Elizabeth-shaped hydra. And in the best realization, representing just how hard it is to secure a work visa in this country, he finds himself in a never ending line of filing rooms stacked on top of one another, forever doomed to climb up, down, or diagonal just to get into a room that’s right next door.
Torres not only uses magical realism to face his obstacles, but to generate humor too. That humor is one of “Problemista’s” strongest assets (there’s a particular joke at the expense of the Bank of America that has not once failed to make me chuckle every time I think about it). The style of humor is particular to Torres’ very specific demeanor. He’s masterful at holding a pause, allowing the audience to sit in the awkwardness, the tension, the ridiculousness of a moment, before offering up a polite response. Despite his status as the main character of this story, everything about Alejandro feels like a person desperate to cause as little trouble as possible, down to the way he walks – with a slight bob to his step, like he’s tip-toeing through life trying not to bother anyone.
Elizabeth, on the other hand, wants to bother everyone, and that tension forms the crux of their odd-couple relationship. If Alejandro gets a salad with goat cheese (he’s vegan), he politely picks around it. Elizabeth sends food back and argues with waiters about non-issues.Alejandro’s problems are mostly a result of the institutions set up to ensure he and people like him fail (and maybe slightly from his inability to stand up for himself). Elizabeth deals with her insecurity and grief by creating problems for herself out of thin air, and her inability tonotstand up for herself only makes things worse for everyone around her.
As prickly as Elizabeth can be, Alejandro can see through her tough exterior, can see the unrelenting sadness that she holds and recognize where it exists in himself. He too knows what it’s like to care about things that other people don’t understand, drawing a connection between his toy maker dream and Elizabeth’s obsession with the art show. But just because he recognizes himself in her doesn’t mean she recognizes herself in him. There comes a moment when Alejandro and the audience realize that Elizabeth has always considered herself the main character in this story, casting Alejandro in a supporting role in his own life.
The thing is, she might be callous, but she’s not completely wrong. Alejandro is often passive, with so little control over what happens to him or what challenges he has to face – not exactly what we would call “main character energy.” “Problemista,” then, becomes the story of a person learning how to be their own protagonist, learning how to walk through life with the confidence of a rich white lady. Ultimately, Alejandro leaves his fraught relationship with Elizabeth having learned something from her. While that might be an optimistic way to look at the more toxic portions of their complex relationship, “Problemista” – much like Alejandro with the unfinished egg – finds hope in the mess.
Sammie Purcell is Associate Editor at Rough Draft Atlanta where she writes about arts & entertainment, including editing the weekly Scene newsletter.More by Sammie Purcell
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