El Salvadorian writer and comedian Julio Torres is moving along the stage-to-television-to-film pipeline with relative ease, producing high-quality work that stylistically remains uncompromisingly him. His directorial debut Problemista fits snuggly into this artistic universe, alongside his whimsical stand-up, Saturday Night Live sketches and children’s books. 

Problemista follows aspiring toy designer Alejandro (played by Torres) living in New York, working at a questionable laboratory where people can freeze themselves under the uncertain pretence they’ll be reawoken in the future. Alejandro oversees the frozen body of artist Bobby, whose neurotic-but-loyal wife Elizabeth (a washed-up art critic played by Tilda Swinton) is a frequent visitor and headache-generator to the staff. When Alejandro and Elizabeth strike up an unlikely working relationship, we begin to realise the two are more similar than their conflicting personalities first suggest. 

In the film’s tender opening moments, young Alejandro is in El Salvador with his mother, played by Catalina Saavedra (Rotting In The Sun, The Maid). Surrealist shapes and sculptures realised by Alejandro’s vivid imagination travel with him, juxtaposed against the concrete jungle of New York City where his ‘rompe cabezas’ (the Spanish term for puzzle directly translating to ‘head breaker’) becomes a fitting metaphor for his visa quest among the unsolvable maze of America’s immigration system. Often opting for allegorical storytelling in the style of magical realism, the film’s hardest-hitting scenes have its leads transform into Don Quixote-esque knights and beasts. This contributes to the maximalist feel of Problemista, which manages to stay equal parts silly, visually interesting and conceptually stimulating. 

Problemista is available on streaming platforms from Monday 8 July.