Julio Torres’ “Problemista,” premiered a year ago at South by Southwest and has been slowly expanding to different markets over the past few weeks. It hits theaters in Phoenix this weekend. This strategy, much like the movie itself, presents an interesting duality, and it’s not the first time the releasing studio, A24 has employed such a strategy. By design, the strategy is meant to get people buzzing about the movie, its characters, and more importantly, at least for this critic, its offbeat and irreverent humor.

Alejandro (Julio Torres) is meek in stature, wildly unsure of himself in an already unsure, over-amplified New York City, who’s left his native El Salvador for a better life on the cusp of his work visa expiring. The thing is, Alejandro is an aspiring toy designer with no real toys to design for, and he’s struggling to legally find work to complete his visa requirements. Thus enters the eccentric Elizabeth, played exquisitely by Tilda Swinton, who has…..erm, challenges of her own.

Torres, who also wrote the script, creates a dream-like world for Alejandro. The beauty in the surrealism is that Alejandro’s worldview is as real to him as the art he wants to create. As this was being written, a double check of the credits had to be undertaken when it was realized that the actor, writer, and director were the same. Pointedly, the convergence of the three roles exerts a tight level of control over the characters, and their situations amidst the dream-like state Alejandro lives in. Yet there is a point in the story where the control loosens, allowing the surrealist aspect to flourish. Torres layers each character as a potential solution to Alejandro’s problems without actually providing a solution.

Elizabeth is a character unto her own, and Swinton dives head-first into the part. Is she schizophrenic, is she psychopathic, does she have a post-associative disorder from the situation with her husband Bobby, played by RZA, or is she simply over-demanding in a world already over-complicated by over demands? The answers to those questions are within the story, requiring the viewer to be open to interpretation, not an easy ask in an era where other stories have more answers than questions.

“Problemista” is reminiscent of Terry Gilliam’s “Brazil,” the only difference is that the nightmare here bears down from the outside, not the inside. Alejandro has a beautiful soul, with compliments to Torres for injecting a running LGBTQ theme into the fabric of the story and the characters.

As Isabella Rossellini’s beautiful voice guides us, much like the recorded guides would provide patrons to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, or any art museum worth its salt, through Alejandro’s transformative journey, leading the audience to the water, while not necessarily drinking it until we know it is safe to do so.

Torres peppers the story with telephone conversations between Alejandro and his lynchpin, Dolores (Catalina Saavedra), and it is within these translated conversations that the real Alejandro is revealed, resulting in a beautiful, very human, story. It requires a focus more on the visual, the actors’ body language, and the situations, something that cinematographer Fredrik Wenzel captures stunningly.

Thematically, “Problemista” can be jarring as two worlds collide. Alejandro is determined to make his dream a success and his self-discovery journey is as human, and worthy, as many have come before it. The eclectic cast, the artful visuals, and the level of control over the art, and subjectively, the release of that control, converge to make a worthy human drama come alive, belying its understandably jarring nature.