“Saturday Night Live” alumnus Julio Torres makes his feature filmmaking debut with “Problemista,” a twee and willfully eccentric comedy about a foreign kid with Big Dreams he’s brought to the Big City.

It’s quirky throughout, funny and so oddly obscurant that it has to be saved from itself, which is exactly what Oscar winning furiosa Tilda Swinton does.

Her hair dyed pretentious New-York-art-critic red, the Celtic accent of her youth slipping through (maybe more Irish than Scots, here), she is a tyro of a terror, an ever-enraged complainer, the “Karen” to end all Karens in a comedy that would never get the kind of attention it merits if she wasn’t in it.

Her Elizabeth is a parade of cringey, explosively-amusing moments who rages at the world as her default mode, a Ms. “Always send food back,” never let an IT “help” line operator get in a word edgwise bully, and simply hilarious to behold.

“Do I need to SPEAK SLOWER?” “I’ve been waiting a VERY long time” (upon just entering a cafe) and “Why are you SCREAMING at me?” are her go-to assaults.

Torres plays Alejandro, the child of a Salvadoran artist (Catalina Saavedra) who raised him as “a project” in a “safe world” with fanciful playhouses and playgrounds of her creation.

When he comes of age, this creative kid wants to make toys for Hasbro. But to get into their online “talent incubator project,” he must move to America, get a visa and repeatedly apply, pitching his ideas for Cabbage Patch doll cell-phone gags and a “Slinky that refuses to walk down steps,” forcing the child to walk for it.

Alejandro has some seriously eccentric notions of what toys should be, that “fun” maybe shouldn’t be a priority.

The only job he can get is at a cryo lab where Elizabeth’s artist-husband (RZA) has been “frozen.” That’s how Alejandro is sucked into her life, falling headfirst into orbit around a “monster” who rages at service sector employees, “the good doctor…Pace (University) was it?” who runs the cryo company, her cell phone provider and art collating software vendor and Alejandro, when the self-perceived need arises.

This walking, fuming “Problemista” is Alejandro’s only hope to get a work visa sponsor, a foot in the door at Hasbro and a chance at his dream. “Managing” the woman those who know her call “The Hydra,” a grieving widow whose tirades are her mourning language, is key for her new chief enabler, Alejandro.

As Alejandro deals with the injustices, Catch-22s and the indignities of living in one of the most expensive cities in the world in a bureaucratic country where “customer service” has become a dirty word and cell companies and Bank of America (an apt name-check) abuse and misuse “customers” because they can, maybe he can learn from this Celtic Woman with a Temper.

“Get a name,” she counsels on every interaction with someone who isn’t serving you up to your standards or is blocking your way. “Become a problem for them.”

Torres, a sort of Latino Justin Long, develops a tiny-steps walk that suits Alejandro here, a foreign-born innocent abroad who doesn’t want to rush into any unfamiliar and possibly hostile encounter, so he covers ground in teensy increments.

He makes Alejandro fluent in pretentious, inane “art world” speak. His character has hints of that classic “do anything” (weird sex work included) to stay in New York “type.”

And he scripts Elizabeth’s one goal as getting her late husband — late until he is theoretically “unfrozen” — recognized for his art. As the man did paintings of eggs in various settings, that may be an overreach. But it’s the New York art world. Stupider styles and more unworthy artists triumph in it every day, often thanks to ethically-compromised, self-important poseurs like critic Elizabeth.

“Problemista” would be lightweight and “twee” taken as is. But to underscore that as a goal, Torres got the great Isabella Rossellini to narrate the tale.

Torres based Alejandro’s Kafkaesque struggles with immigrating to the U.S. on his own experiences, and his novel touch on that worked-to-death subject is having fellow immigrants — at his immigration lawyer’s office and elsewhere — literally vanish on screen as their application is rejected and their “status” in this hostile city and country is dismissed.

He can’t legally “work, but “You must find a sponsor, and pay fees to earn money,” our narrator reminds us as Alejandro crawls through a Spike Jonze/”Being John Malkovich” office “maze.” “The maze (of American immigration) is impossible to navigate.”

It’s a serious subject given a delicate takedown here.

That message might have gotten lost or passed-over in an otherwise lightweight and too-precious narrative. But “Problemista” becomes the Great Tilda’s grandest playground, a chance to wear the wacky fashions, keep her hair at its unruliest and let her furious freak flag fly in the best “I want to speak to the manager” send-up ever.

Rating: R, sexual situations, some profanity

Cast: Julio Torres, Tilda Swinton, RZA and Catalina Saavedra, narrated by Isabella Rossellini.

Credits: Scripted and directed by Julio Torres. An A24 release

Running time: 1:38