Rating: 3/5
Alejandro works at a cryogenic lab, wherein they euthanize their customers and freeze them until the lab can figure out how to bring them back. But this isn’t why Alejandro came to the US from El Salvador — Alejandro dreams of being a toy designer for Hasbro.
To stay in the US, Ale needs a work visa and sponsor. When the lab fires Ale, he is desperate for a solution. He sees an opportunity in the customer service nightmare, Elizabeth.
Julio Torres has a hyper-specific sense of humor. It either lands with you or doesn’t. A feature-length collection of his humor begs only to be loved or tolerated. If you’ve watched Los Espookys or My Favorite Shapes, you understand.
What those shows won’t prepare you for is Tilda Swinton’s character, Elizabeth. Elizabeth occupies the vast majority of the movie’s runtime. If you’ve worked in customer service, I don’t know how you can find her anything but triggering. Her monologues run in endless, repetitive circles. In the film, Alejandro is the only person who can tolerate them. If we include the audience, he may still be the only one, or at least one out of a select few.
Torres understands earnest surrealism the way Michel Gondry once did. When Gondry wrote and directed, he underserved the magical ideas that made them charming. Torres fills his movie with a similar magic that characters consistently undercut.
It’s also a first movie brimming with first-movie problems — loads of ideas, not all fully formed. Promise and potential are this movie’s greatest strengths. Let’s hope this movie leads to more opportunities to fulfill that potential.
Then again, I have a massive headache so that may have interfered with my enjoyment of the movie. I’ll try again later