P-Comedy: PROBLEMISTA (2023)
I swear I didn’t do it on purpose: Tilda Swinton is stalking me. After watching ORLANDO (1992), I had to pick a comedy that started with the letter P, and I chose to watch PROBLEMISTA (2023) by Julio Torres because:
I knew it would be queer (life is short, you have to know your priorities)
I had seen the poster up outside TIFF Bell Lightbox for way too long, so I expected something good. TIFF-good.
When I started watching PROBLEMISTA, I knew nothing about the story, the only thing I knew was the poster.
This could’ve been a kid’s movie for all I knew.
I certainly did not expect to find Tilda Swinton 30 years after her portrayal of Orlando in the biopic I had just watched! Well, she killed it as Elizabeth, a neurotic rich white woman in New York’s art world.
“Don’t scream at me!” the lanky Becky would scream at anyone who (calmly) pointed out the absurdity of her requests.
Elizabeth never takes no for an answer. She’s a bulldozer in people’s lives. She’s unpredictable, she is loud, she is dismissive, and she can lift you up with the same swiftness with which she can smash you back to the ground. Swinton embodies a character larger than life, larger than Torres, larger than the film itself. In this film, she is like cilantro. Or parsnip: once she is in the mix, you can never not taste her. She leaves her flavour everywhere.
Torres, what did you do? Why did you cast her? You wrote, directed, and produced this debut feature, and you’re the face on the poster. Why would you want to hide in the shadow of such a monument? I mean, now that I look at it, your name does come second on the poster, behind Swinton’s.
The Torres/Swinton pairing (Alejandro/Elizabeth) is odd, but it works. Alejandro is a young queer (definitely neurodiverse) man from El Salvador, the only child of an artist who lives there and has made him her most beautiful creation. He could live a peaceful life in El Salvador under the shield of his mother’s unyielding love, or he could follow his dreams and become a toy designer for his dream employer in New York.
But in order to stay in New York, he needs a work visa. The film is about his attempt to remain in the city by finding an employer willing to sponsor him as a Latinx immigrant who is already in the United States (which is a line most forms don’t include). It exposes the absurdities of a system seemingly designed to turn immigrants into criminals, while highlighting the privileges of those who never have to navigate such obstacles simply to live where they want.
I have had my share of staying permits in France, Germany, and Japan. I know what it’s like to build a life somewhere only to have it threatened by a country that wants you to “go back to your country” because of a technicality. But to see that experience presented as a comedy—that’s a first.
When Alejandro finally expresses how annoyed he is by Elizabeth’s shenanigans (every time there’s a solution, she has this toxic habit of coming up with another problem—not one that existed to begin with, but one she suddenly becomes obsessed with), it leads to my favorite passage in the film:
ALEJANDRO: Why... Why are you making everything so difficult?
ELIZABETH: Oh, that's rich coming from you. You... who adore difficulty. You cannot get enough of it. You seek it out round every corner. Not Mexico City, not Montreal, not Berlin. Nowhere easy to migrate to. And not a doctor, not a software designer. Nothing that anybody's gleefully handing out visas for. No. An aspiring... maker of toys.
Stop calling me out like this, Swinton!
Without having any explicitly queer storyline, this film is resolutely queer. When you know queer aesthetics in film, the shoe fits. This freedom, this magic, this sense of fantasy, the surrealism, this constant impression of a fever dream, this bending of rules, this blurring of genres... that's queer aesthetics for you.
Shoutout toTeddy Mathias who designed the opening credits: that’s really cool.
Up next on my watchlist: a drama that starts with Q, a queer romance that starts with R, and a straight romance that starts with S