'Problemista' review: a furious Tilda Swinton at her most terrifying moment

The sharpest films about New York's art scene, including 1996's “Basquiat,” starring future “American fiction” grumpy Jeffrey Wright, capture something relentless about the city. Despair is not far from the mind, nor are the disparities of wealth and power between artists, critics and, in the clouds, collectors and dealers. Maybe there is a way to navigate it all, if you have the right strategy. Or several.

“Problemista,” the first feature film from its writer, director and star, youth comedian Julio Torres, adds a whole new wing to this small gallery of films. (They come so infrequently that it's exciting to see someone so confident.) Deliriously strange but relatable, the film is, at heart, an immigration story, more autobiographical than semi-autobiographical: Alejandro (Torres), from El Salvador like its creator, dreams. to make strange toys for Hasbro, but he faces the clock of an expired visa and deportation.

However, it's Ale's detour through the malicious art world, and into the orbit of the film's alternately terrifying and recognizable main character, that transports “Problemista” into a rarely explored realm of diabolical mentorship. Here she will be tasked with the impossible. She will also find self-esteem, a strange and fierce kinship and maybe even a sponsor. If I call the movie a love story, don't laugh. Torres has done it with love in his heart.

From the beginning we are in the company of a filmmaker who wants to try things. A prologue set in a magical grassy playground (the film is narrated by Isabella Rossellini, providing instant freshness) leads to a trash-filled New York marked by sinister signs: a dangling purse caught in the jaws of a door subway, recipe jars overflowing; an immigration office where rejected applicants simply disappear in the middle of a conversation. Cowed by his own backpack, Alejandro timidly tiptoes around America, afraid of announcing himself. Torres gives his character a constant bedhead and it makes sense: He's in a nightmare no less twisted than the one in “Beau Is Afraid.”

Then she arrives: Elizabeth (Tilda Swinton), her hair and eyes a perpetual meltdown of code red. The fury is palpable. No waiter is safe. No tech support guru is helpful. Her bag contains a bunch of keys, adapters, and what looks like a half-eaten chicken sandwich. To call it the most unhinged performance in a career that already includes “Trainwreck,” “Michael Clayton” and “Snowpiercer” is almost to tarnish Swinton.

We learn that Elizabeth's husband was a kind artist, Bobby (a persuasive RZA), who painted unsellable oil eggs, but opted for premature cryogenic freezing, hoping for revival in a future era in which that he and his work would be better understood. Ale is being fired from the freezing lab when Elizabeth seizes him, a potential assistant. Could I bring Bobby's canvases to his '80s loft studio? Could he co-curate a show of Bobby's work? Can he calm the breakup with one of Bobby's former lovers (Greta Lee) and recover a lost egg painting in the collection? Could Elizabeth, in turn, become his signature lifeline? Let's not anticipate.

The plot unfolds in this vaguely Faustian manner, always with the threat of incipient catastrophe, and allows Torres to arrive at something not often seen in these art world films: an entitled haughtiness that also, somehow , contains an invitation to camaraderie. Ale will become Elizabeth's project, as long as she can get her attention. His status as an unpaid freelance assistant is shaken by a secret inability to use FileMaker Pro and, worse still, the arrival of a languid, handsome intern, Bingham (James Scully), who comes from a place of privilege so ridiculous he seems to float. . . (Of a past car accident, Bingham purrs, “I probably hit someone, but my dad just fixed it.”)

Race plays an undeniable role in “Problemista” and Torres, a former “Saturday Night Live” writer, hasn't been afraid when he could have done something funny. He reminds me of another New York art film, “Six Degrees of Separation,” which had the elegance of John Guare's work to tie its elements together more firmly. Torres arrives at serious ideas through occasionally unserious methods. Turning the search-ad site Craigslist into a whispering demon and pile of trash (Larry Owens) is inspiring; Turning Elizabeth into a mythological hydra that Ale must kill in a cave feels like cosplay.

But what Torres accomplishes is impressive, especially that midnight anxiety at the ATM, scanning for sketchy cash jobs online, and, more sneakily and warmly, a blossoming connection. Isabel go Ale sees this fully and, in a charming and completely unsentimental moment, advises him: “Get a name and become a problem for them.” He, in turn, learns to calm her anger and remains impassive in the face of her tirades, hypnotized by the force of her nature. Finally, he adopts his customs. She's made him a New Yorker: a gift, if you know how to use it.