Ceci Leamon's debut film, "Bob Treviño Likes It," is a highly personalized and heartbreaking work, in the vein of Charlotte Wells' "Aftersun" and Luna Carmoon's "Hooligan Roach." All three films dramatize real-life objects, events, and moments, blurring the lines between fact and fiction, and ultimately achieving cathartic release through emotional authenticity.
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03-29, 2025The story revolves around 25-year-old Lily Treviño (played by Barbie Ferreira), a fictionalized version of Leamon herself, living an extremely lonely life in northern Kentucky. She has no friends or family, only an abusive father. Her only daily interaction is with her client, Daphne (Lauren Spencer), whom she lives with as a live-in disability support assistant.
The film is shrouded in a pervasive atmosphere of misogyny, and Lily is often the direct victim of this atmosphere. At the beginning of the film, Lily bursts into tears because a man mistakenly sends her sweet, complimentary texts, mistaking her for someone else. Subsequently, we see Lily having dinner with her father, Bob Treviño, who barely acknowledges her and coldly objectifies women on a dating app in front of her, embodying his indifference towards women.
Lily is always accommodating, compliant, and compromising, making her appear lonely and pathetic. Her sense of self is consumed by serving others, and she has little idea of what she wants, let alone needs. Although at times the film's portrayal of Lily's suffering is exaggerated, almost comical, it never loses sight of the emotional core deep within Lily. Ferreira perfectly blends an innocent gaze with her intense desire for love and to be loved, as well as the desire to be a good person and have nice things, highlighting Lily's trauma.
The plot escalates to a climax when Lily's father throws a tantrum for no reason and stops talking to her. To compensate for the missing affection in her life, Lily meets a man online named Bob (John Leguizamo), who shares the same name as her father, and Lily pretends to investigate whether they are related. The online Bob is a gentle, dedicated construction manager with a passion for astronomy, and like Lily, his voice is often ignored by others in his life. A seemingly insurmountable rift exists in the lives of Bob and his wife, Jeanie (Rachael Bay Jones), gradually revealing the tragedy of their young son's death from a congenital disease. Bob and his wife are forever immersed in grief, with Jeanie reliving moments from their son's short life over and over through scrapbooks.
The initial perfunctory exchanges between Lily and Bob gradually develop into a warm and intimate friendship, with Bob playing the father figure Lily never had, and Lily playing the child Bob didn't have long enough. Bob, a model of the traditional father figure, directly refutes Lily's biological father. He teaches Lily basic life skills, fixes Lily's malfunctioning toilet, teaches her about tools, teaches her some Spanish, and takes her camping, a first for her.
More importantly, he becomes her emotional solace simply by being kind to her, caring about her, and considering her feelings. Getting to know Bob is almost Lily's second adolescence, and she reorients her sense of self around these new goals, in which her boundaries and needs are not only respected but also met. Despite not being related by blood, Bob exhibits the same lack of self-worth as Lily in many ways, and he can sense in Lily something he himself has experienced: extreme loneliness.
The film could easily have taken a more improper or sexually psychological path—after all, Lily is a vulnerable young woman, and Bob is a much older man—but the film's depiction of this new friendship is so pure that you never doubt the pure intentions behind it. This is a film that eliminates your worst assumptions about it. Leguizamo's sweet innocence contributes greatly to this. He brings an understated dignity and overwhelming care to the quietly struggling Bob, correcting Lily's long-held, harmful insistence on self-identification.
As a site of original sin, Francis Stewart excels as a dysfunctional father capable of inflicting all kinds of violence, the worst of which is psychological. He passes the bare minimum test of not physically abusing Lily, but still constantly emotionally blackmails her into being grateful for the meager efforts he made in negligently raising her.
Throughout the film, we are waiting for Bob and Lily's cathartic climax, waiting for them to stand up to their respective detractors. When we reach these moments, they are exhilaratingly therapeutic. The fact that "Bob Treviño Likes It" is able to establish such strong empathy for its characters in such a short amount of time is a testament to Leamon's writing and Ferreira and Leguizamo's acting.
Both heartbreaking and hopeful, "Bob Treviño Likes It" uses the quirkiest aspects of its complex plot—scrapbook competitions, handwritten corny poetry, puppy trauma—to weave a beautiful and touching story about connection, the small but important ways we change other people's lives, and chosen family.
"Bob Treviño Likes It" is now playing in theaters.
