US immigration puzzle centre stage in Problemista: movie’s stars Tilda Swinton and Julio Torres on the surreal New York saga

Swinton was already a fan of Torres, who is from El Salvador, by the time she was sent the vibrant script and was one of the ones encouraging Torres to direct it himself. But she was worried she could not play Elizabeth. Here, they talk about Problemista, to be released on Apple TV+, the turning point for Swinton, and putting their own stamp on New York films.

Julio Torres and Tilda Swinton in a still from Problemista. Photo: courtesy of A24/TNS

Julio, where did this idea start for you?

Torres: I equate it to building a sandcastle where you don’t really start out with a blueprint. You’re just sort of moving sand around and then you go, ‘Oh, that looks good’. And then you get to a point where you’re excited about it and you call other friends, and then they start putting things together.

It wasn’t me opening my computer and saying, ‘I want to write a movie’.

Torres plays an aspiring toy designer from El Salvador caught in the US immigration system in Problemista. Photo: AP

How did the character of Elizabeth come to be who she is on screen?

Swinton: I loved the idea of Elizabeth, but I saw her as somebody else. I didn’t see her on the page as somebody that I would play.

To start, and this sounds very kind of broken of me, but I was hung up on the idea that she had to be an American. And I felt ill-equipped, as I have been in the past, when playing Americans.

I remember when I played an American in Michael Clayton, a lawyer. I remember saying to Tony Gilroy, “I don’t know any American lawyers. I don’t know what they’re like.” Even though I have very many divine American friends, I feel very alien to American culture.

When we cleared up the possibility that she could be not American, that was for me the turning point. I thought that maybe she’d be English.

Swinton loved the idea of Elizabeth, but “saw her as somebody else”. Photo: AP

Julio, people often describe your comedy as surreal. Was there a moment when you decided that was your style?

Torres: These things just sort of come out. I don’t think that you look through a menu of styles and decide, “That’s the kind of thing I want to do”. This is how I know how to operate, and it’s where I’m comfortable and able to articulate ideas.

What’s funny is sometimes I’ll watch a movie that’s so gorgeously simple, it’s like two characters in a house and I think, “Oh my god, that is the kind of thing I will do.” And then it always ends up being a circus.

Swinton: But that’s also true of [Italian filmmaker Federico] Fellini, for example. You’re in very good company. He didn’t make films about two people in a house.

Swinton in a still from Problemista. She was among those encouraging Torres to direct the film. Photo: courtesy of A24/TNS

What was important to you in creating your own New York mythology with this?

Torres: I just really wanted to stay true to my lived experience in New York, not New York as backdrop, not New York as might as well be any other place, but the specifics of living [there] because it just really, really, really contextualises the way that people behave in the every-man-for-himself attitude that a lot of the characters have.

Everything is going for something, but then you end up like seven steps below, if you’re lucky, because everything is so difficult to maintain here.

Torres in a still from Problemista. His comic style came to him naturally, he says. Photo: courtesy of A24/TNS

Do you have any hopes for what people will see and get out of the film?

Swinton: One doesn’t want to be prescriptive. What you really want is just for people to see it. That feels a lot to ask, but we are just so relieved they’re going to get a chance now.

But just acknowledging how difficult life can be for people … the stacking of the bricks against people caught in the whole paraphernalia of trying to immigrate into the United States is really important for people to look at and think about, maybe particularly this year when they might have an opportunity to vote.

And to do it and give people the opportunity to really laugh at the same time is very generous of Julio. There’s a sort of amniotic fluid of kindness around it. There’s nothing hectoring about this film. There’s nothing piercingly angry about it. It’s about predicaments.

Torres: I love that. Predicaments.

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