‘Problemista’ Review: Craven New World

The comedian Julio Torres presents himself like an alien from outer space, an unsmiling observer of Earth paraphernalia. Born in El Salvador, but seeming to hail from somewhere between Andy Kaufman’s fictional Caspiar and Mork’s planet Ork, Torres uses his stand-up, his “Saturday Night Live” skits (he wrote for the show from 2016 to 2019) and, now, his eccentric filmmaking debut, “Problemista,” to indulge his fixations, including plastic toys and ostentatious sinks.

Torres can anthropomorphize any object — his 2019 one-man special, “My Favorite Shapes by Julio Torres,” explores the psyche of the airplane curtain dividing first-class from coach — but he has barely taken interest in humanity. The most telling line in “Shapes,” for which he adorned his body with astral flecks of silver glitter, is when Torres announces he will “abruptly do some impressions at you,” emphasizing his refusal to extend himself toward the other beings in the room.

Yet “Problemista,” which Torres wrote, directed and stars in, reveals a new willingness to tell a relatable story with a riveting sketch of an honest-to-goodness person. The film is a loosely autobiographical recounting of his ordeal to find an employer willing to sponsor his immigration visa (fittingly, he secured one that deems him “an alien of extraordinary ability”), and Torres’s miseries are familiar to anyone who’s been short of cash in a new city: consistent scrimping and soul-sucking hours sifting through fishy online jobs. Craigslist, embodied by Larry Owens, appears as a junkyard necromancer urging gig seekers to click on a posting labeled “cleaning boy kink.”

The need to kowtow seems to have scarred Torres. But the character to watch isn’t his analogue, Alejandro, an aspiring toymaker who tiptoes across the screen as if Torres is wearing a Halloween costume of a shy and ordinary person. (The cowlick is overkill.) Instead, it’s his boss, Elizabeth (Tilda Swinton), an art critic who sorta-kinda hires Alejandro to assemble a gallery show of paintings by her cryogenically frozen husband, Bobby (RZA). (Torres himself was an archivist for the artist John Heliker and gleefully vents about the database software FileMaker Pro.)

Argumentative, venomous and perennially aggrieved, Elizabeth is an embittered New Yorker who spends a quarter of her screen time screaming at tech support over the phone. She’s the kind of malcontent who will, in all sincerity, accuse people of being “in cahoots.” Swinton plays her with her fingernails curled, like a badger looking for a fight. It’s a frightful and gargantuan performance that should come with a trigger warning. I’ve met an Elizabeth. You probably have, too.