Julio Torres on the Rocky Relationship That Drives "Problemista"

The New Yorker

The director dissects a key scene that establishes the dynamic between his character, Alejandro, and Tilda Swinton’s “temperamental art-world lady,” down to the meanings of their hair styles.

Transcript

00:00 I'm Julio Torres and welcome to the Director's Commentary.

00:03 [dramatic music]

00:05 Problemista is ultimately a movie

00:08 about a young man from El Salvador

00:10 struggling to find a sponsor for his work visa.

00:14 And he finds it in this temperamental art world lady

00:19 played by Tilda Swinton.

00:20 - Oh, El Salvador.

00:22 Pupusas.

00:23 - Yes.

00:24 - And those nuns they killed in the '80s, yes.

00:27 - Right.

00:28 - It's all seen through a surrealist comedic tone.

00:31 This is an early scene between Elizabeth,

00:35 Tilda's character and my character.

00:37 Tilda likes to think of this movie as a love story.

00:39 So seeing it through that lens,

00:41 this scene would be the according scene.

00:44 - Yes, well, I've just been held up.

00:47 Other people holding me up all day.

00:49 - Oh no.

00:50 - Obstacles, obstacles.

00:51 I went to the upholster, you know,

00:52 for the little bench under the window.

00:53 - The nook?

00:54 - The nook, the nook, yeah, exactly.

00:56 It was actually the very first scene that we shot.

00:58 Even though there's so many lush and fantastical scenes,

01:02 this one gets to what the heart of the movie is,

01:05 which is like two very different people

01:08 seeing the same thing from two very different points of view.

01:11 Actually in this scene,

01:12 we found a voice that Elizabeth puts on

01:17 when she wants to sound important,

01:20 which Tilda and I nicknamed the grand lady.

01:23 So I would tell her like, oh no, she needs to,

01:25 like when she's cursing out this person,

01:27 she needs to sound like the grand lady.

01:28 - And I went to pick them up and they're horrible.

01:30 - Oh no.

01:31 - Awful, they're red velvet, if you can imagine.

01:33 Excuse me, excuse me.

01:35 I've been waiting for a very long time.

01:37 Is something going on?

01:38 Are you closed?

01:39 - Oh, I'm sorry.

01:41 Do you know what you'd like?

01:43 - I'd like this charged.

01:45 - Her grand lady voice is sort of like her way of saying,

01:49 like, no, I belong here.

01:50 I am a high class society lady and I am into waiters,

01:54 which because the voice is so put on

01:56 is actually kind of tragic.

01:58 - Oh, this menu.

01:59 What is it with walnuts?

02:00 Walnuts, walnuts, walnuts.

02:01 It's like a cafe for squirrels.

02:03 - Well, the walnuts, they go very nicely with the salad.

02:06 - Do I look like I need educating on fine cuisine?

02:08 - Oh, no, no, no.

02:09 I wasn't saying that.

02:10 - You're screaming at me.

02:12 - I wasn't.

02:14 - Her look is a series of things gone wrong.

02:16 Her hairstyle is that shade of red

02:19 that we see out in the wild a lot,

02:21 but never really in movies

02:22 because it's a shade of red you get by accident.

02:25 We really wanted the hair texture

02:29 to be at odds with the haircut.

02:31 And a little backstory we made for her

02:32 is that she went to the hair salon

02:34 and pointed at a magazine and demanded that haircut.

02:37 And then the woman at the hair salon was like,

02:39 no, your hair texture is actually not going to take well

02:42 to this haircut.

02:43 But she got it anyway,

02:45 and then was given like a bag of products

02:47 that she was supposed to use every day,

02:48 but did it once and then never again.

02:50 - I'll have the gochee salad,

02:52 but is it possible to do it with no cheese?

02:54 - Yeah.

02:54 - Awesome.

02:55 - Oh, well, all right.

02:57 I'll have the same thing, but I'll have it with cheese

03:00 and an iced tea.

03:03 - Please.

03:05 - Awesome.

03:07 - They like it when you say please.

03:11 It's like giving them a little morsel for them to nibble on.

03:13 Don't you like goat's cheese?

03:17 - Oh, no, I'm vegan.

03:20 - Oh.

03:22 Who else is vegan?

03:23 - I don't know.

03:27 A lot of people.

03:29 - Bill Gates?

03:31 Someone awful.

03:32 - My character is highly adaptable to a fault

03:36 because he is not from the US.

03:40 He's very, very scared of rocking the boat.

03:42 And he has that sort of,

03:44 that burden of exceptionalism, I think.

03:46 I wanted to play him like he was like a little robot

03:51 from space, just sort of like very quietly collecting data

03:54 of people around him.

03:55 And I think that's where the backpack came.

03:58 It looks sort of like he's like collecting information

04:00 and putting it on his backpack.

04:02 And the little cow like became like his little antenna.

04:06 Another really exciting variable to the movie

04:10 is the waiter.

04:11 And I mean that because this movie is populated

04:14 by so many of my friends.

04:16 And the actor who plays this waiter,

04:17 Jack is also a friend of mine.

04:19 And so this scene encapsulates

04:21 what the rest of the movie was gonna be,

04:23 which is me, writer, director,

04:26 till the legendary performer,

04:29 Julia's friend.

04:31 - This young gentleman cannot eat cheese.

04:35 - It's fine.

04:36 - You tell him.

04:37 - I'm vegan.

04:39 - He's allergic.

04:40 - To goat cheese or?

04:41 - Everything.

04:42 - Oh, I apologize.

04:44 We'll refund the salad.

04:45 - Well, that's not what we want.

04:47 - Okay, I just don't know what else I could do.

04:50 I can't go back and deny.

04:51 - Fetch somebody else who would say something different.

04:54 - I'll get my supervisor.

04:55 - Oh, you're gonna hold us hostage now.

04:56 - Okay, so get my supervisor or don't.

04:58 Those are the choices.

04:59 Either get him or I don't get him.

05:01 It was fun finding ways of how to tie in

05:05 how heightened the movie is in such a grounded scene.

05:08 So we came up with the waiter's manic clicking of the pen.

05:12 That then I knew that Rob was going to score that moment

05:14 and make it like very interior and cacophonous.

05:17 - So Elizabeth, you were mentioning pitching the show around?

05:23 - Also in this scene, I gave an extra,

05:27 someone sitting in the back a Rubik's cube

05:29 because I wanted to set the table for like,

05:31 oh no, the world I'm showing is one where people go out

05:34 to lunch by themselves in a Rubik's cube.

05:37 - I'll sponsor you.

05:38 I'm gonna get your visa.

05:41 - That sounds great.

05:44 Alejandro hears the promise of a work visa

05:48 if they curate a show for her late husband's paintings.

05:51 And also it's a window into her temperament.

05:56 Even though it's just a scene of two people at a cafe,

06:00 just emotionally and thematically,

06:01 I think it's heavier than it might seem.

06:04 (upbeat music)

Category

Transcript

Recommended