In 'Problemista,' Tilda Swinton and Julio Torres pay homage to problematic New Yorkers

The imaginative, New York-centric world of “Problemista,” Julio Torres’ feature directing debut, is a celebration of eccentric characters who are drawn to problematic situations. But none exemplify the film’s raison d’etre more than its protagonists, Alejandro and Elizabeth, who are played by Torres and Tilda Swinton. Outsiders hailing from different hemispheres, the two seemingly mismatched strangers cross paths through a cryogenics company promising eternal life and embark on the year’s most anxiety-inducing and ultimately hope-filled cinematic love story.

“I’m very seduced by the idea of the future being a destination,” Torres told NBC News, adding that the A24 film, which is being released in theaters nationwide Friday, was originally titled “Impossible Journeys” as a nod to its characters’ boundless determination. “And I have always been peripherally interested in cryogenics. People see it as grand or narcissistic. I think there’s something kind of humble and quietly humiliating about it — to be, like, ‘Can I get an extension? I don’t think I’m done.’”

The journey to a new life in the far-off future is only one of many improbable and potentially degrading expeditions in “Problemista,” which is named for what Torres defines as “a person who finds stimulation, or art, in problems,” and also stars Isabella Rossellini and Greta Lee.   

Early on in the surreal, somewhat autobiographical film, Alejandro (Torres) leaves behind his home country of El Salvador, and the fantasy-filled world of his childhood, in hopes of launching a career as a toymaker at Hasbro. But it’s not long before he encounters a series of roadblocks in his newfound home, New York. 

First, he loses his visa sponsorship after he’s fired from his job at FreezeCorp — a Manhattan-based cryogenics company that charges a steep fee to preserve the terminally ill — for mistakenly unplugging the frozen artist (played by rapper RZA) he’s tasked with overseeing. Then, almost immediately after, he’s recruited by the artist’s wife, a caustic, eccentrically styled art critic named Elizabeth (Swinton) to help pull off the far-fetched idea of mounting a show of her cryopreserved husband’s egg paintings.

Saddled with Elizabeth, who’s promised to consider sponsoring his visa in exchange for his services, and a slowly dwindling bank account, the perpetually positive Alejandro sets out to conquer a decades-old software program called FileMaker Pro, the American immigration system and the New York art scene — obstacles that take on the form of mazes and monsters in fantastical, anxiety-inducing scenes. 

“Surrealistic flourishes are a different way of accessing the truth, of accessing real emotion. For some people, the most accurate way of telling a story is a very stripped-down, grounded conversation. I feel most comfortable showing the stakes if I take all these liberties,” said Torres, whose character repeatedly contends with a labyrinth of drab offices connected by trap doors, a demonic Craigslist seer (Larry Owens) and an Elizabeth-like hydra during the film.

“All the symbols and flourishes in the movie are done to convey emotion,” he added, referring to a menacing hall of hourglasses, where time runs out for visa hopefuls. “It’s not fantasy for the sake of fantasy; it’s rooted in human experience.”

Torres, who came to the U.S. from El Salvador in his early 20s and got his first big break writing for NBC’s “Saturday Night Live,” has managed to win over audiences with his flair for the fantastical during his relatively short career. Beginning with HBO’s darkly comedic horror series “Los Espookys,” which he co-created and starred in, and now with his first feature, his surrealist projects have earned acclaim for their abundance of originality and wit. As a result, he has attracted some of the industry’s biggest names — not the least of which is his co-star, the much-sought-after Swinton — as collaborators. 

As Torres’ Elizabeth, a European transplant who falls in love with and eventually tanks her career over a self-absorbed painter fixated on eggs, Swinton is so at home that the character seems to have been written for her, even though she said that she originally couldn’t see herself signing on for the role. 

“Our first conversation was me saying, ‘I love this so much, but are you really sure? Am I really your Elizabeth?’” Swinton told NBC News of receiving the script from Torres. “I was originally a little fixated on her being American, and I felt a little overwhelmed by not being able to be accurate enough. But when we realized that she didn’t have to be American, she could come from anywhere, it was like growing cress on a flannel: I was able to grow some mold of my own.”

From the offset, Elizabeth is a whirlwind of scathing one-liners, snap judgments and problematic behaviors. Between terrorizing wait staff and rattling off an endless list of demands, she thoughtlessly lobs comments in Alejandro’s direction, like, “Who else is vegan? Bill Gates? Someone awful.” And she slanders anyone who can’t figure out FileMaker Pro, a databasing program created in the 1980s that Torres describes as a magnet for the hopeless, promising order in the way cults promise salvation or gambling promises riches. 

But it’s her incongruous styling choices, which Swinton and Torres worked together to perfect, that are perhaps the most visceral element of the character.

“We wanted something that hadn’t ever been done before — that no one would ever do,” Swinton said, referring to the process of coming up with her character’s distinctive dyed-red, shaggy bob and tortured outfits. “The sort of prevailing rule about all her looks was they all had to be super uncomfortable and against the grain. So the style of her hair had to be against the grain of the texture of her hair; the color had to really not suit my skin tone. We had to keep looking for the real dissonance.” 

Despite Elizabeth being uniquely disharmonious, her particular brand of chaos feels very true to New York’s creative world, in which antiquated systems reign supreme and difficult personalities are always jockeying for space. (Torres and Swinton even said they’ve been stunned by how many triggered moviegoers have approached them with their own stories about FileMaker Pro and Elizabeth-like bosses, occasionally turning them into impromptu therapists.) But rather than a simple critique of that world, Elizabeth is also a reflection of the filmmaker’s appreciation for problematic people and places.

“I’m very stimulated by people like that, and I feel like I collect different parts of them. I’ve always found it very difficult to just say something is ‘not my problem’ or ‘that person’s crazy.’ I’m always trying to examine why a person is behaving in a certain way,” Torres said, explaining that Elizabeth, whom he described as a “collection of little failures,” is an amalgamation of highly flawed people he’s encountered over the years. 

Through “Problemista,” which is dotted with crooked electrical outlets, piles of trash, half-finished renovations and unusual characters, Torres invites the viewer to adopt a similar sense of curiosity — “looking at all these imperfections, but hopefully, seeing them with love,” he said.

Although “Problemista” originally began as a story about perseverance, according to Torres, along the way it turned into what can be best described as a story about two problematic platonic soulmates who find each other against all odds. 

In the end, Alejandro comes to appreciate Elizabeth’s take-no-prisoners approach, even though he’s often the one who’s in her line of fire. Elizabeth occasionally stops complaining long enough to encourage Alejandro to pursue his dream of designing off-beat toys — like Cabbage Patch Kids dealing with life in the digital age and duplicitous Barbies — and the two even end up finding common ground over FileMaker Pro, the most improbable thing of all. 

“The thrill of being in the tunnel and knowing that there’s a light at the end of it was very informative in making this movie,” Torres said of its hopeful ending and the connection between being an optimist and a “problemista.” “I think we’re all full of contradictions; I am someone who is attracted to difficulty but also someone who believes in solutions and finding a way forward.” 

He added, “You can’t be an optimist if there are no problems. You can’t be hopeful if there’s nothing to be hopeless about.”

Torres’ infectiously optimistic outlook on life is something that’s shared by his co-star, who describes the film as “a love story” between two people who save each other, a message that feels almost subversive in the current moviegoving climate. 

“There was a time when we all thought things were just inevitably going to get better, and then, fairly recently, we realized that evolution can throw really nasty tricks in our way and things can go badly backwards,” Swinton said. “And here we are, suggesting that we don’t have to get used to that, and it’s worth being an optimist, because, however s┄ things are, sometimes you can actually get through the wire and get over the hill.

“We’re all trying to be so brave, buckling down to the inevitable disasters coming down the pike, but it’s actually true that there wonderful things that happen, and we can make them so,” she added. “It does feel transgressive, but, at the same time, it’s good for people to believe that we can actually prevail.”