“Saturday Night time Dwell” alumnus Julio Torres makes his function filmmaking debut with “Problemista,” a twee and willfully eccentric comedy a couple of international child with Large Goals he’s dropped at the Large Metropolis.

It’s quirky all through, humorous and so oddly obscurant that it needs to be saved from itself, which is precisely what Oscar successful furiosa Tilda Swinton does.

Her hair dyed pretentious New-York-art-critic purple, the Celtic accent of her youth slipping by (perhaps extra Irish than Scots, right here), she is a tyro of a terror, an ever-enraged complainer, the “Karen” to finish all Karens in a comedy that will by no means get the form of consideration it deserves if she wasn’t in it.

Her Elizabeth is a parade of cringey, explosively-amusing moments who rages on the world as her default mode, a Ms. “All the time ship meals again,” by no means let an IT “assist” line operator get in a phrase edgwise bully, and easily hilarious to behold.

“Do I must SPEAK SLOWER?” “I’ve been ready a VERY very long time” (upon simply coming into a restaurant) and “Why are you SCREAMING at me?” are her go-to assaults.

Torres performs Alejandro, the kid of a Salvadoran artist (Catalina Saavedra) who raised him as “a challenge” in a “secure world” with fanciful playhouses and playgrounds of her creation.

When he comes of age, this inventive child needs to make toys for Hasbro. However to get into their on-line “expertise incubator challenge,” he should transfer to America, get a visa and repeatedly apply, pitching his concepts for Cabbage Patch doll cell-phone gags and a “Slinky that refuses to stroll down steps,” forcing the kid to stroll for it.

Alejandro has some critically eccentric notions of what toys needs to be, that “enjoyable” perhaps shouldn’t be a precedence.

The one job he can get is at a cryo lab the place Elizabeth’s artist-husband (RZA) has been “frozen.” That’s how Alejandro is sucked into her life, falling headfirst into orbit round a “monster” who rages at service sector workers, “the great physician…Tempo (College) was it?” who runs the cryo firm, her mobile phone supplier and artwork collating software program vendor and Alejandro, when the self-perceived want arises.

This strolling, fuming “Problemista” is Alejandro’s solely hope to get a piece visa sponsor, a foot within the door at Hasbro and an opportunity at his dream. “Managing” the lady those that know her name “The Hydra,” a grieving widow whose tirades are her mourning language, is essential for her new chief enabler, Alejandro.

As Alejandro offers with the injustices, Catch-22s and the indignities of residing in some of the costly cities on the earth in a bureaucratic nation the place “customer support” has develop into a unclean phrase and cell corporations and Financial institution of America (an apt name-check) abuse and misuse “prospects” as a result of they will, perhaps he can be taught from this Celtic Girl with a Mood.

“Get a title,” she counsels on each interplay with somebody who isn’t serving you as much as your requirements or is obstructing your means. “Develop into a drawback for them.”

Torres, a type of Latino Justin Lengthy, develops a tiny-steps stroll that fits Alejandro right here, a foreign-born harmless overseas who doesn’t wish to rush into any unfamiliar and presumably hostile encounter, so he covers floor in teensy increments.

He makes Alejandro fluent in pretentious, inane “artwork world” converse. His character has hints of that basic “do something” (bizarre intercourse work included) to remain in New York “sort.”

And he scripts Elizabeth’s one aim as getting her late husband — late till he’s theoretically “unfrozen” — acknowledged for his artwork. As the person did work of eggs in varied settings, that could be an overreach. But it surely’s the New York artwork world. Stupider kinds and extra unworthy artists triumph in it on daily basis, usually due to ethically-compromised, self-important poseurs like critic Elizabeth.

“Problemista” could be light-weight and “twee” taken as is. However to underscore that as a aim, Torres bought the nice Isabella Rossellini to relate the story.

Torres primarily based Alejandro’s Kafkaesque struggles with immigrating to the U.S. on his personal experiences, and his novel contact on that worked-to-death topic is having fellow immigrants — at his immigration lawyer’s workplace and elsewhere — actually vanish on display screen as their utility is rejected and their “standing” on this hostile metropolis and nation is dismissed.

He can’t legally “work, however “It’s essential to discover a sponsor, and pay charges to earn cash,” our narrator reminds us as Alejandro crawls by a Spike Jonze/”Being John Malkovich” workplace “maze.” “The maze (of American immigration) is not possible to navigate.”

It’s a critical topic given a fragile takedown right here.

That message may need gotten misplaced or passed-over in an in any other case light-weight and too-precious narrative. However “Problemista” turns into the Nice Tilda’s grandest playground, an opportunity to put on the wacky fashions, hold her hair at its unruliest and let her livid freak flag fly in the perfect “I wish to converse to the supervisor” send-up ever.

Ranking: R, sexual conditions, some profanity

Solid: Julio Torres, Tilda Swinton, RZA and Catalina Saavedra, narrated by Isabella Rossellini.

Credit: Scripted and directed by Julio Torres. An A24 launch

Working time: 1:38