Julio Torres’ creative ventures are as easily identifiable as they are difficult to replicate. Unabashedly self-indulgent, Torres’ previous works — Los Espookys (2019), Problemista (2023) — have been marked by an embrace of the odd, the queer, and the culturally distinct. His latest HBO show performs on a highly ambitious scale, where the audience a New York as seen through Torres’ eyes. Stitching together sketches, Torres borrows from his experience as an SNL writer to deliver a comforting fever dream in Fantasmas.
In Fantasmas, Torres plays an aspiring writer and actor named Julio,who struggles with systemic problems of housing and healthcare. The only solution to his impending eviction and a suspicious-looking mole comes to him in the form of a lost oyster-shaped golden earring. For a variety of reasons, that build up as the show moves along, Julio must find the earring to set everything right. As he moves around the Big Apple in search, he comes across a cornucopia of New Yorkers whose own oddities colour his life.
A still from ‘Fantasmas’ | Photo Credit: HBO
It begins with a family sitcom that Julio is watching in his cab. In this show within the show, Paul Dano is a suburban dad who invites a lost alien to live alongside his family… before leaving them for the furry alien. This is one of the several vignette-style tales that play out, as Julio’s search for the earring takes a pause. Julia Fox as Mrs. Claus testifies against an elf (played by Bowen Yang), who is suing Santa, while later Emma Stone (who also serves an Executive Producer for Fantasmas), stars in a reality show about rich New York housewives. Meanwhile, Julio as per his admission can “feel the inner lives of shapes and colours and sounds and numbers and letters.”
Fantasmas (English)
While a question like ‘Does the letter Q come in too early in the alphabet?’ may feel a bit out of place at first, Steve Buscemi’s performance as an identity crisis-laden ‘Q’ puts these anxieties to rest. In fact, this emerges as one of the stronger points of Torres as a creative, who has written and directed all six episodes. Torres’ writing balances his creative vision, with a measured way to realise the same. As Dylan O’Brien and Aidy Bryant join the lengthy list of star cameos for the show, Torres ensures that each addition adds value. The multiple sketches, featuring these actors entertain you, and at times may even be unsettling, but they are never too long or overbearing to distract from the tightly-written main script. Torres’ writing finds the time and place for all the different elements, even the letter ‘Q’!
A still from ‘Fantasmas’ | Photo Credit: HBO
The show’s production design elevates this feeling of existing in an artifice, in an impossible reality where a goldfish has a human secretary. Cinematographer Sam Levy uses the fact that the show is shot entirely on a soundstage, to his advantage and contributes to Fantasmas’ dreamlike quality. The camera often zooms out of the elaborate sets to show its bare bones, and Julio entering the scene through a fake door. Meanwhile, what we know and understand of New York visually, comes through blurry projections on screens that the actors barely avoid brushing against.
Yet, not all that unfolds in Fantasmas is untethered. The baseline of Julio’s struggles still have to do with housing and healthcare, and he hones in on such aspects in his sketches too.
Altogether, the existence of Julio Torres’ Fantasmas ends up feeling like a miracle in the current television landscape. To watch something retain so much of its uniqueness is rare, as is the creative voice of Julio Torres. Fantasmas may not end up being everyone’s cup of tea, but it brews an unmissable storm.
All episodes of Fantasmas are currently streaming on JioCinema
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