Immigration restrictionists sometimes like to say they support immigration as long as it is legal. Why can't immigrants stand in line and follow the rules?That's the problem The legal system is labyrinthine and the rules often border on absurdity.. It's Kafkaesque, or at least Kafka when seen through Kafka's lens. monty python And Charlie Kaufman. It's existentially terrifying, but also kind of weird, and sometimes even quite funny.
This is a reasonable approximation of the following observation. problem child, a magical realist immigration fable about an aspiring toy designer from El Salvador looking for a work visa. This kind of story could easily become monotonous or heavy-handed, but director and star Julian Torres keeps the tone light and inviting throughout. This all-too-fun movie sometimes suffers from quirky elements. Sometimes rainbows make me feel nauseous. But the best sequences are offbeat journeys into surreal worlds designed to capture the frustrations of American immigration policy and the seemingly impossible demands placed on people who just want to work.
problem child It depicts the struggles of Alejandro, a young man living in New York City who dreams of creating unusual toys for a company like Hasbro. He has a notebook full of ideas, most of which are twists on familiar toys, broken or altered in some way to make a social statement. There are also cabbage patch kids with fake cell phones and toy trucks to show their complicated relationship. A flat tire, a multicolored slinky refusing to go down the stairs. It's not entirely clear why real children would actually want to play with these intentionally messed up things. They are not actually toys, but art projects with gimmicks.
It makes sense, then, that after being fired from his erratic cryogenic life preservation company, Alejandro ends up working in the art world for a woman named Elizabeth. Elizabeth's husband Bobby (rapper and musician RZA) was a customer of a cryogenics company and was a painter in his conscious life. She wants to hold an exhibition of her husband's paintings, but the paintings are all of eggs. The yolk rests with Alejandro.
Elizabeth is not a good egg. Indeed, something inside her had cracked.
Elizabeth, played by Tilda Swinton, is a self-centered, demanding, and extremely difficult character who is never satisfied and constantly feels wronged by the world. But she offered him what he desperately needed: a work visa that would allow him to stay in the country legally after being fired. So he puts up with her rage and tries to help put on her show. That's not true, uh. eggIt's really easy.
In the meantime, he must come up with money to pay for his visa, but officially his immigration status does not allow him to earn money. So he resorts to cash jobs on Craig's List, some kind of giggling, glitchy demon that offers gig work that may or may not pay. It is represented by a character.
All of this may sound a little forced, a little overdone, a little too satisfying, and it is. The movie also looks a little like one of his toys, which Alejandro unfortunately designed. It's a nice idea that's conceptually clever but intentionally broken and unplayable.
But the film is full of interesting and strange ideas, and it's often genuinely fascinating, too, with its dreamlike depiction of immigrant purgatory and its evocation of Elizabeth's struggle to keep her happy. monty python Alum's famous fantasy sequence Brazil. Torres himself was born in El Salvador and has previously worked as a comedian and writer, but he shows promise as a first-time filmmaker. For Americans and movie fans, it's better that he's working here.