Problemista

Weirdness for weirdness' sake just kinda works in this trippy, funny, downbeat meditation from star/writer/director Julio Torres, with Tilda Swinton at her Nic Cage-iest.

Walking out of a sneak preview of “Problemista,” I overheard a person loudly proclaiming it the worst thing they’ve ever seen on a screen. It was an older, conservative-looking lady, and it would fair to say this movie was not intended for people like her.

Speaking as a person who’s somewhat adjacent to her demographically, I enjoyed it quite a bit even as I recognized it as the sort of filmmaking we might dub ‘weirdness for weirdness’ sake.’

Maybe you just have to be a little bit weird to appreciate something like this.

It’s written, directed, co-produced and stars Julio Torres, who specializes in quirky, deadpan humor as a stand-up comic, writer for “Saturday Night Live” and actor. He’s pretty much portraying a version of himself in this film, a young gay creative type from El Salvador trying to make it in New York City.

He plays Alejandro Martinez, who early on gets fired from his job at FreezeCorp, one of those places that freezes terminally ill people in hopes they’ll one day be revived. As a legal immigrant this imperils his visa status, and he has 30 days to find another work sponsor or be deported.

Alejandro falls in with Elizabeth Asencio, an art critic whose late(ish) husband, Bobby (RZA), was his responsibility at FreezeCorp until there was a slight accident with his freezing chamber. She’s trying to organize an art show of Bobby’s paintings to pay for his continued, very expensive cryogenic stasis after FreezeCorp jacked up the prices. Elizabeth takes Alejandro under her wing to help organize things with a vague promise of sponsorship as the reward.

Elizabeth is beyond a piece of work. She’s a volatile mountain of hostility and resentment, the sort of person who shrieks nonsensical criticism at people and then accuses them of shouting at her when they reply modestly in their own defense. She looks like she dressed up for a night at Studio 54 in the 1970s and never bothered to change — a gradated red shag of hair, neon eye shadow and couture like Annie Hall on acid.

Tilda Swinton plays Elizabeth, and the best way I can describe the performance is it’s Tilda Swinton at her Nicolas Cage-iest.

Among Elizabeth’s many peccadillos is insisting on Alejandro using FileMaker to organize all the data about the paintings, which the narrator (Isabella Rossellini) helpfully describes as being like Google Sheets “but harder to use and not free.”

It seems Bobby’s paintings — all of them dreamy portraits of eggs — have been scattered all around and need to be rounded up. One of the current owners is Dalia (Greta Lee), who had an affair with Bobby, upon whom Elizabeth took her revenge by excoriating her own paintings in her role as a critic, and the two women have been at quiet war ever since.

It’s up to Alejandro to manufacture an apology between them, which is challenging given that Elizabeth has probably never said she’s sorry in her entire life. She’s the sort of person who can lord it over others while simultaneously portraying herself as the victim.

Alejandro, who’s smart but very passive and shy, must navigate a complex set of challenges involving his visa status, his lack of money and keeping in Elizabeth’s good graces, if she has any. Meanwhile, he’s communicating with his mother (Catalina Saavedra) back in El Salvador, with whom he shares a close, (literally) magical relationship.

There are some very clever and funny bits, like Alejandro’s interactions with Craigslist to find under-the-radar odd jobs for extra cash. Craigslist is portrayed by Larry Owens as a bacchanalian fellow hawking all sorts of wares, tempting the young man with shady opportunities like “cleaning boy.”

Later on we meet Bingham (James Scully), a spoiled trust fund baby whose parents are friends with Elizabeth, who acts as Alejandro’s rival for the very vague position of her intern.

“Problemista” mixes surreal sequences, like Alejandro imagining himself as a medieval knight fighting Elizabeth’s more monstrous aspects, with grungy realism as he schleps about the city, trying to make a buck and not get thrown out of the country. His dream is to design toys for Hasbro, though his ideas are very wry and postmodern, like a jack-in-the-box that apologizes for scaring you.

Elizabeth and Alejandro are pretty much opposite ends of the human spectrum. She’s privileged and snarly, while he’s meek and vulnerable. Over time she tries to instruct him in her ways, which are unpleasant but often effective. She tells him that institutions are impossible to crack, but individuals are more reachable: “Get a name, and become a problem for them.”

“Problemista” is a little precious and self-referential, but it’s also incredibly inventive and darkly humorous. Imagine an Andy Warhol movie by way of early Coen brothers, and you’ve got an idea.