Tilda Swinton is right about weird Barbies and reluctant slinkies

Tilda Swinton is the sort of actor whose presence on screen makes a film a little more beguiling. Whether she’s playing someone otherworldly, like the vampire burnout Eve in Only Lovers Left Alive, or someone more grounded, like the academic Alithea in Three Thousand Years of Longing, there’s something ethereal about the way she inhabits a character, as if she’s always been there, waiting for the story to show up around her.

However, in Problemista — a surreal New York fairy tale starring writer-director Julio Torres as Alejandro, a young man facing deportation after losing his job — Swinton is more arch than usual. Her character, Elizabeth, is a fickle art dealer Alejandro begins working for in a desperate attempt to land a work visa as he clings to his dream of one day making strange toys for Hasbro. Elizabeth is frustratingly noncommittal about sponsoring him, perhaps due to her erratic nature, or some deeper pain on her part — Problemista is partly a story about these two unusual souls coming to understand each other.

Recently, Swinton spoke with Polygon from her New York hotel in support of the A24 comedy, in a brief yet wide-ranging conversation about difficult bosses, the misery of the immigration queue, and how work desensitizes us to each other.

This interview has been edited for concision and clarity.

Polygon: This is such a warm film, and yet your character is so abrasive!

Tilda Swinton: Oh my Lord. Well, you know, she came out of Julio Torres’ head, what can I say? And I gather his experience as well. So it’s been really extraordinary, because […] pretty much everybody has had that boss. It’s quite triggering, particularly the whole FileMaker Pro abuse scenario [in the movie]. There are a lot of people who feel that the film was made about their life story. Do you have an Elizabeth, Joshua?

Image: A24

I’ve had Elizabeths in my life, yes. I also wondered what horror story Julio had experienced with FileMaker Pro, since the difficulty of that program is so integral to the plot.

[Laughs] We’re gonna see, maybe they’re gonna retaliate. Or they might like it! You never know! And Hasbro, we’re waiting to see what they make of this. We’d like them to make [the Problemista] toys. That would be odd, if they got behind all of this and said, OK, we’ll make your Barbie with her fingers crossed behind her back. Or a reluctant Slinky. That would be fabulous.

I do get the sense you and Julio share a proclivity for richly imagined inanimate objects.

Yes, we have that shared inner landscape.

Elizabeth has a line in the trailer that kills every time I see it in a theater, about pupusas—

“And those nuns who were murdered in the ’80s.” That’s all you need to know about El Salvador in the East Village, apparently!

How often have you had a character whose whole problem and outlook is so perfectly encapsulated in one moment?

It’s so well written. What Julio sent me was a script that — I just realized yesterday, we pretty much put it on the screen. We did do some improvising and had a lot of fun in the playground of the set. Some of that makes its way in, but the architecture of the film, the general meat and potatoes of it, are there.

I thought, first of all, he was someone I knew I wanted to be around. And secondly, the script read like a film I wanted to see today. Elizabeth felt absolutely comprehensive. I didn’t know how or why I should play her. There was a moment when I thought she had to be American. And I thought, Well, no, you have to find someone better suited for this. But when he explained to me that she could be from anywhere, something really lit up in me, because I thought, Well, this really changes the film, because it makes her an immigrant as well.

We don’t know how she came to get over to America. I have all sorts of fantasies about her having to scale the wall at Glastonbury and been a groupie for some absurd Whitesnake-type band, getting off with the drummer and coming back to the States with him. And maybe marrying him and then getting resident status and then meeting Bobby. I mean, I don’t know. But the point is, she has had to fight her own fight in America. It’s a particular fight, right?

In America — I also, three days ago, came through immigration. It’s not pretty for anybody. People who are born in America, and never have to come through that line, don’t know what it is. And it doesn’t matter if you’ve got some fancy-shmancy O-1 visa, which I have. No, in fact, to be honest, I think they punish me for it. Every time. They’re sadists, man, they really are.

Do you think Elizabeth grasps the power she has over Alejandro, as someone who can sponsor his visa?

I think she does understand. I think that’s why she’s able to infiltrate a key that he needs. I mean, she trains him up. And he gets the lesson. And he works it. And if he hadn’t got it, if he hadn’t absorbed it, and if he hadn’t gone to Hasbro to find that guy, he would not be where he ends up. I mean, there’s just no question he learns the lesson.

Image: A24

And then, of course, the blinking Hasbro executive. Who knows what his story is! I mean, presumably he hasn’t been through the immigration queues. But he’s obviously worked his way up a big corporation. He’s probably had bits knocked off him, and is pretty desensitized and confused and bamboozled, and certainly allows himself to be bullied by Alejandro. He’s a victim of something.

I love the way pretty much everybody in the film is trapped in some way or another — the poor Apple guy who Elizabeth rings up and abuses, most days for hours. And he’s only got two answers! He’s got ‘Have you tried turning it off and on again? Or, you know, have you tried pressing a different button?’ And that’s all you can say to her.

Presumably, he doesn’t want that life. It is a job. But presumably, he’d like the job to be a little more using of his spirit. I think that’s really one of the things that’s so clever and humane about the film. It’s optimistic, because it says, Yeah, we’re all trapped. And yes, we have maybe been desensitized. And we’ve got these sort of American football helmets on, just constantly trying to butt our heads against things. But we can find a way to take them off and hear other people and look after other people. One of the beautiful things about the film is the way in which [Alejandro and Elizabeth] look after each other. They really give each other what each other needs. And it’s a love story, I believe. It’s a fine romance.

Problemista is currently playing in limited release and opens wide on Friday, March 22.