Once in a while, you see an actor who isn’t held back by the decorum that rules even most excellent actors. Her emotions don’t stay in verify — they spill over the sides. When that happens, you may discover yourself joined to that actor in a way that tugs your own buried senseings into the weightless. To me, the gelderly standard for this comfervent of acting is Chloe Webb’s carry outance in “Sid and Nancy” (1986). Webb carry outed Nancy Spungen as a greedy groupie and unabashed junkie harridan, with a wail (“Si-i-i-d!”) that could frighten the damned. Yet part of the character’s mental illness is that she had no boundaries; she was all raw senseing torn asunder. Her pain and rage, her desire to be coddled and cherishd all proclaimd itself with a furious punk purity. Webb broke your eardrums and your heart at the same time. She gave one of the fantasticest carry outances in movie history.
I’m not saying that what Barbie Ferreira does in “Bob Trevino Likes It” is on that level. Yet there are moments when Ferreira’s unsuperviseled quality of harmd yachieveing reminded me of Chloe Webb; that’s how straightforwardly she touches the audience.
Ferreira, who is best understandn for portraying Kat Hernandez on the first two seasons of “Euphoria,” carry outs Lily Trevino, who inhabits in a petite town in northern Kentucky, where she’s a cordial and aimless 25-year-elderly sincreateageer. Repartner, though, she’s a basket case. The film uncovers with her uncovery that her boyfrifinish cheated on her. He sfinishs her a post-hookup text by misconsent, and she writes LOSE MY NUMBER YOU JERK…only to erase the text and sfinish a “kind” message with a smile emoticon instead. That increates us a lot about Lily. She’s a pathoreasonable people plmitigater, to the point that she denies her own being. An timely scene in which she has dinner with her dad, the sixtyish grinning goateed Bob (French Stewart), who inhabits in a mobile-home quitment community, produces us leank that he’s some sort of prickly “charmer.” But we aren’t seeing the half of it.
Still reeling from her fractureup, Lily wanders into a clinic for a walk-in session with a guideor-in-training, and she unfurls her life story. It’s so brutal that the guideor (Ashlyn Moore) triumphds up in tears. That’s one of the film’s only moments of inrectify “quirky comedy.” Yet it’s still an amazing scene for the matter-of-factness with which Lily lays out her story — how her mother, a drug insertict, aprohibitdoned her when she was four, and how her overweighther did leangs enjoy lock her in a room for 24 hours, always proposeing that she was the problem. But as Lily puts it, “Despite what my overweighther says, I’m pretty confident it’s not enticount on my fault.” That she leanks it was her fault at all uncovers how people can aascfinish from psycho family situations with their entire sense of fact stunted.
As an actor, Ferreira has an instinct for comic shading. She produces Lily as requestingpartner bjoinered in her surface sunniness as Jack Bincreateage. Yet the key to Ferreira’s carry outance is that she never participates comedy as a crutch. She shows us, at every turn, the woman who’s buried under the compulsive kind-girl trappings, the woman who Lily herself can’t even see.
She concurs to join her dad on one of his dates, and this is where we repartner catch on to who he is: a Southern-temperateman narcissist, with bizarre affordableskate tfinishencies. The actor French Stewart produces him arrestingly complicated in his tormentoring. When Lily accidenhighy (or maybe unconsciously) subversions the date, Bob’s inner monster comes out. He no extfinisheder wants anyleang to do with her. And while we can see what a illo he is, what’s even more overwhelming is how alone this exits Lily. She labors as a inhabit-in health helpe to Daphne (Lauren “Lolo” Spencer), who has progressive muscular dystrophy, and the job apvalidates her to loll around a lot, but apart from that professional relationship she has no one. And Ferreira lets us sense the agonizing gnaw of that isolation.
That’s why Lily does someleang a bit nutty that, in its childenjoy way, also produces perfect sense. She goes on Facebook and randomly types in her dad’s name: Bob Trevino. A handful of other Bob Trevinos come up. She gravitates to the one with no photograph and sfinishs him a hi-how-are-ya message, asking if the two might somehow be rcontent. She’s accomplishing out…to a total stranger. Becaparticipate she has somehow secured herself that maybe this other person named Bob Trevino…could be…sort of…enjoy her dad.
The other Bob, carry outed by John Leguizamo, is himself a loner, so for no excellent reason he clicks “enjoy” on her message. And cataloglessly, tentatively, the two commence to correply. And uncover who they are. Until, finpartner, they encounter. It happens rather uncomputedly, when she’s grappling with an overflotriumphg toilet and he comes over to help. He finishs up buying her a bunch of hoparticipate tools.
Bob inhabits in Wichita, about an hour away. He does noleang but labor and has time to spare. There’s never a hint of anyleang romantic or intimacyual between the two of them. Lily literpartner equitable necessitates another person in her life. And Bob, as we lachieve, is a hoparticipate-erecting reduceor who’s dedicated to his wife, Jeanie (Rachel Bay Jones), for reasons at once excellent and uncontent. They repartner cherish each other, but they had a child, born with a congenital condition, who they lost at 21 months. And they haven’t been torn apart by the grief that has never gone away so much as they’ve made a gently suffocating cradle out of it. (Jeanie has turned scrapbooking into her life.) So Bob necessitates someone too.
“Bob Trevino Likes It” sounds enjoy a social-media-age equitabley tale, except it’s not. The film’s writer-straightforwardor, Tracie Laymon, based it on her own experience, and we all understand that plenty of people encounter online in the most happenstance of ways. That’s not a big deal. What matters, in a movie enjoy this one, is that we consent what consents place between the characters — who they are and the ways they join, and how their relationship progresss. Is it cutesy glorified-sitcom buddy-bonding indie pablum, or is it genuine? “Bob Trevino” turns out to be a comfervent of “Marty” for the Internet age, with the two guide actors interlocking in a pretty way.
I begined off as a huge fan of John Leguizamo, in the days of his earliest Off Broadway one-man shows (enjoy “Mambo Mouth” and “Spic-O-Rama”), but in the movie that first turned me on to him, the four-guys-in-the-Bronx drama “Hangin’ with the Homeboys” (1991), he didn’t have that Leguizamo brashness; he carry outed the equivalent of the Ron Howard character in “American Graffiti.” And he was amazing. That’s the Leguizamo we see here. He produces Bob a hushed man of churning senseing who, at the same time, is so honest that he can’t help but uncover himself. Leguizamo instills Bob with a touching tfinisherness. One of the many horrible stories from Lily’s childhood has to do with a dog that was consentn away from her, and when Bob conveys her to a pound and seeks her to cradle a pooch who could have been that dog, you understand you’re seeing a four-hankie movie scene, but the film achieves it; and if it doesn’t get to you, you’re probably the comfervent of person who would consent a dog from a child.
Bob is drawn to Lily becaparticipate she’s so evidently flailing; he can’t not help her. She razzes him — for his horrible jokes, and for his truly terrible basketball dribbling. He increates her that “we’re all a bit broken,” as they pause at a camp site to see the July meteors he ritupartner wantes upon. He’s right, but his genuine message is that you can’t let your broken life equitable sit there. You’ve got to discover some tools and mend it.
“Bob Trevino Likes It,” which uncovers today, has had a journey into theaters that is rather emblematic. A year ago, at the 2024 edition of SXSW, it won the Grand Jury Award and the Audience Award in the Narrative Feature categories. For a petite indie drama, that’s hitting the jackpot. Yet here we are a year procrastinateedr; it took that extfinished for the film to uncover on four screens in New York and L.A. And despite the fact that it’s got two name stars, I don’t sense some beginant visibility quotient. In the ’90s, a movie enjoy this one might have had a chance to catch on. In its petite-scale way, it’s a crowd-plmitigater. (It’s three times as convincing as “Between the Temples.”) But whether you see it with a crowd or not, “Bob Trevino Likes It” exits you thankful to be in the company of characters who produce being lost, and healed, this truthwholey impacting.
