(courtesy IMP Awards)
People need people.
No, that is not inspired by the 1964 Barbra Streisand track of almost the same name but by the simple recognition of the innate sociability of the human species.
We need to belong. We need to matter, and at a profound level, and when we don’t, or we don’t recognise that we do to people not prominently on our radar, then we are miserable, bereft and horribly, terribly alone.
Someone who knows something about that is Bob Trevino Likes It‘s protagonist Lily Trevino (Barbie Ferriera), a 25-year-old in-home carer for Daphne (Lolo Spencer), a feisty, sassy Black woman with some kind of degenerative diseases who attacks life with a ferocity that Lily lacks.
Daphne, of course, larger-than-life personality aside, has an obvious reason to be attacking life with gumption and fury, but then for an entirely different reason so does Lily.
It’s not that she exists on a low income or that she has no real friends to speak of (though Daphne, as it emerges, has a thing or two to say about that); rather she has a toxic, gaslighting father, Bob Trevino (but not crucially the titular man of the title), played with a malevolent narcissistic sadness by French Stewart, who is his own worst enemy but who is well practised in projecting all of that onto his sweet, vulnerable daughter.
Reflecting a deep desperate need to be loved, after a life crucial shorn of one of the most human needs there is, Lily constantly makes excuses for her scumbag of a dad, laughing off his cruelties, justifying his insensitivities, and apologising for a slew of actions for which she is not even remotely culpable.
As we meet her in Bob Trevino Likes It, she is grappling with feeling stuck in life, marooned in a world where she has no health insurance, no friends, no family of any value and no prospect of remedying any of those deficiencies.
Then one very sad night, after an incident with her douchebag of a dad which takes gaslighting down to a whole other toxic, bottom-dwelling level and which ends up him banishing her from his life – a good thing, right? Not the way Lily, who is yet to find her inner Daphne sees it – she thinks she has found him on Facebook, his profile marked by an icon and no access to the content within.
Believing she has found a way to be connected to her dad at a time when he seems disinclined to have anything to do with her, Lily hopes that he will at least communicate with her in some sort of limited form online.
When he responds with an uncharacteristic warmth and thoughtfulness, Lily is delighted; here at last is a way to be connected with her dad where he’s nothing like the terrible person he is in person.
Turns out though that it’s her dad at all, but rather a middle-aged man living an hour away from Lily, played by John Leguizamo in superlatively nuanced form, who is caught in some deep emotional sadnesses of his own.
At this point, most people would shrug their shoulders, sigh and apologise for connecting with the wrong person; but it turns out that while Lily most definitely needs a kind, thought soul like the titular Bob, he also needs her though at first he’s not sure why.
His wife Jeanie (Rachel Bay Jones) who has subsumed the couple’s collective grief into photo scrapbooking, is able to see why this relationship might matter, and while she’s clearly more than a little uncomfortable, she guardedly goes along with it, even if she’s not party to the extent of this highly unusual but emotionally vital and necessary friendship.
What really strikes you as you watch Bob Trevino Likes It, based in part on the real story of writer-director Tracey Laymon, is how beautifully it casts everyone involved, yes, even, dad Bob Trevino who, in the hands of Stewart, emerges partly as a broken soul worthy of understanding, if not even a scrap of empathy.
There is also a very grounded universality to the film which goes dark and deep into how wrong life can go, but which never loses sight of the rich and sustaining power of friendship, connection and how even in the worst of times, and good lord but doesn’t Lily have more than her fair share, there is the possibility of something wonderfully transformative happening to you.
The transformative portion if the story is not even remotely what you think it might be, and to say anything more about Kily’s journey through the film, would be wander far too deeply into spoiler territory, but the richness of Bob Trevino Likes It is how it stays true to the unpredictable vagaries and cruelties of life without surrender to their crushing effect.
There is, for all the sadness and hopelessness of just about every character involved in the story, a real vibrant hope to Bob Trevino Likes It which knows that life rarely holds true to fairytale and glossy wishful thinking but that is still capable of changing things for the better, even if that shift comes with a sting in the tail.
This is a film that subsumes and overcomes you in the best of all ways, a story so compellingly immersive that you are lost in it in a way that only the very best and honest of stories are capable of, and which, in so doing, helps you to grapple with some pretty potent themes.
Bob Trevino Likes It may not be all sunshine and roses but there is a real joy and hopefulness to it even so, the film full of sparkling moments of soul-restorative joy and healing and a real, palpable sense that even when there is much stacked against you, and so little left in your corner, that one connection with someone who matters, one link to another human being who gives a damn, can remake your world and theirs, and leave a dark and dismal place full of life, light and a sense that tomorrow might be possible, and good, after all.