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.
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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)