‘Bob Trevino Likes It’ Review: Barbie Ferreira and John Leguizamo Illuminate the Tender Complexity of Chosen Kinship

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Mar 21

Written By Jonathan P. Moustakas

Barbie Ferreira and John Leguizamo in Bob Trevino Likes It **Courtesy of Roadside Attractions**

A Meticulously Rendered Indie Drama on Alienation, Emotional Resilience, and the Transformative Power of Intentional Bonds

In Bob Trevino Likes It, writer-director Tracie Laymon constructs a debut feature of striking emotional precision and thematic depth, delivering a profoundly autobiographical work that interrogates the nuances of estrangement, the yearning for familial affirmation, and the unpredictable avenues through which human connection may materialize. Drawing from her own lived experience, Laymon deploys minimalist cinematic tools with a sharp sensitivity that allows this intimate narrative to resonate far beyond its modest scale. Central to its emotive impact are compelling performances by Barbie Ferreira and John Leguizamo, who imbue their characters with rich interiority and subtle pathos.

Premiering to acclaim at SXSW, the film introduces us to Lily Trevino (Ferreira), a socially isolated young woman in Kentucky, reeling from the emotional abdication of her father (portrayed with steely detachment by French Stewart). Seeking some semblance of closure or reconnection, she initiates a Facebook search that leads her not to the man she remembers, but to another Bob Trevino (Leguizamo)—a solitary and emotionally guarded figure who tentatively accepts her digital overture. From this serendipitous miscommunication blossoms a relationship of deep mutual recognition, a cross-generational friendship that challenges the assumptions of familial legitimacy and charts an alternative trajectory for emotional repair.

Conventional Frameworks Subverted by Emotional Authenticity

John Leguizamo in Bob Trevino Likes It **Courtesy of Roadside Attractions**

On its surface, Bob Trevino Likes It may appear to operate within the familiar contours of indie drama, complete with digital-age plot mechanisms and earnest voiceover narration. Yet what distinguishes Laymon’s script is its refusal to indulge in sentimentality. Instead, the screenplay is grounded in particularities—awkward, vulnerable, and sometimes contradictory moments that ring with psychological truth.

Ferreira’s Lily is not styled for likability; she oscillates between despair and defiance with a conviction that renders her emotional arc viscerally believable. In scenes where words fail, Ferreira allows her expressions to shoulder the dramatic weight. Her portrayal encapsulates the emotional dissonance of abandonment—the perpetual tension between needing validation and rejecting those who withhold it.

Leguizamo, often associated with larger-than-life characters, here reveals a previously untapped register of restraint and nuance. His depiction of Bob is not merely soft-spoken but emotionally labyrinthine: a man who has learned to armor himself through routine, yet gradually permits his empathy to surface. The actor's subtle physical choices—a hesitant smile, a moment of misdirected eye contact—convey volumes about Bob’s internal calculus.

Together, the two leads forge a relational dynamic that resists platitudes. Their intimacy is constructed through shared silences, mutual awkwardness, and the slow erosion of defensive facades. It is a relationship that speaks not of obligation, but of deliberate emotional labor.

Cinematic Language as Emotional Cartography

Barbie Ferreira in Bob Trevino Likes It **Courtesy of Roadside Attractions**

Laymon’s direction privileges interiority. Working closely with cinematographer Jon Keng, she develops a visual lexicon attuned to psychological nuance. Shallow focus compositions and fragmented visual motifs—blurred reflections, prolonged close-ups—foreground Lily’s disorientation and yearning. Occasional shifts into stylized abstraction, such as the centrifugal swirl that envelops her during moments of existential dislocation, reinforce the thematic interplay between presence and absence.

Though the use of Facebook as a narrative medium might date the film in certain respects, its thematic utility is undeniable. Laymon understands social media not as a gimmick but as a vessel of contemporary alienation and inadvertent intimacy. In a world where familial roles are increasingly mediated through screens, the accidental connection that catalyzes the film feels not just plausible but necessary.

Amanda Yamate’s score serves as a sonic analog to the film’s understated affect. Avoiding grandiose cues, the music instead adopts a melodic sparseness that accentuates the characters’ emotional landscapes without dictating them. This restraint underscores Laymon’s commitment to emotional verisimilitude.

Redefining Redemption Without Reconciliation

Where many narratives of parental estrangement lean toward catharsis via confrontation or forgiveness, Bob Trevino Likes It subverts that expectation. Laymon is more interested in the ethics of care outside conventional kinship structures. The film suggests that healing can occur not through reparation with those who harmed us, but through affirming connections with those who choose to see and support us without precondition.

Stewart’s depiction of Lily’s father is haunting in its mundanity—apathetic, emotionally unreachable, and casually cruel. The film eschews melodrama in these scenes, making them all the more unsettling for their realism. These encounters underscore the insidiousness of neglect not as absence, but as a persistent denial of emotional recognition.

Conversely, the scenes shared between Lily and Bob are imbued with a quiet sanctity. Laymon positions their bond not as a replacement for biological connection, but as a radical reimagining of what kinship can mean. In one particularly resonant moment, Bob extends shelter to Lily—not out of paternal obligation, but as an act of moral generosity. His gesture reframes family as a construct formed through intention, not inheritance.

A Minor Key Masterwork of Emotional Honesty

Bob Trevino Likes It is a modest narrative in terms of plot, but it achieves a thematic and emotional complexity that far exceeds its indie trappings. It is a film of quiet revolutions—of redefining love, of refusing to be undone by rejection, of discovering one’s worth in the gaze of an unexpected other. Tracie Laymon’s debut doesn’t offer platitudes or resolutions, but it does offer truth. And sometimes, that’s more than enough.

This is a work that honors the dignity of those who persist in seeking connection despite every reason not to. It reminds us that familial estrangement need not define us, and that kinship, when freely chosen, can be a site of profound healing.