Original caricature by Jeff York of Eva Victor as Agnes with her kitten Olga in SORRY, BABY (copyright 2025).
How does trauma shape us?
Does an emotionally wrenching event tighten our lens on the world or help widen it? Does time heal matters or does distance merely push the traumatic event to the periphery, always there, but softening with each passing year?
Writer/director/star Eva Victor explores that subject in SORRY, BABY, an utterly stunning film debut that has won numerous festival prizes this year already and will likely figure in critics ballots at the end of the year as well. It’s a movie so specific, so detailed, and yet so universally human, it’s had me thinking about it for days now. And while the inciting incident is a rape that lead character Agnes (Victor) suffers, her evolving reaction to it and how it shapes her life makes for one of the best character studies I’ve ever seen on screen. SORRY, BABY is moving, amusing, and astonishing from first frame to last.
Astonishing?
Indeed. For starters, this film, despite the theme of assault, manages to showcase Agnes as a remarkably wry and subtly brave sort. She’s a quirky, New England college professor to begin with, and those eccentricities help her cope and help us in the audience find levity in her situation as well. Victor keeps us on our toes too via a presentation of Agnes’ life that doesn’t follow an A to B to C order. Instead, the narrative jumps about from one year, then back one, then back two, and then forward three. By doing so, Victor showcases moments that make more sense after more information is divulged, as well as underlines Agnes’ recovery without having to conform to such a straight-forward presentation.
This works on two levels. First, it adds surprise to who characters are and what meaning they have in Agnes life, not being tethered to such a traditional presentation. Second, the out of order sequences represent Agnes’ mind too. After all, thought processes are seldom linear. And the swirling vortex that is Agnes’ mind represent her healing process too. And in such an array of thoughts, come an cacophany of emotions too. Agnes experiences sorrow, shame, rage, and confusion, sometimes all in the same scene. She’s of a generation that grew up juggling plenty of trauma already – Columbine, the economic fallout of 2008, COVID-19 – and working to make sense of it all and get through it is all part of her learned experience.
You’ll be delightfully surprised how gentle Victors’ dark comedic tendencies play out, never vicious, almost always sprinkled with silliness. At one point, Agnes’ taste for revenge against her attacker leads her to ask a neighbor for lighter fluid. We know she wants to burn down his office, but she lies badly to her friend, telling him the lighter fluid is for igniting a grill to cook hot dogs that she and her female friend are having for dinner. When he asks if he can join them for one, her lie becomes more ridiculous as she says she only bought two dogs. It’s a hilarious moment. (A bit heartbreaking too.)
Agnes’ humor shines through too when she plays a bit of a cat and mouse game with a prosecutor interviewing her for jury duty and refrains from telling the whole truth about being the victim of a crime to get out of the assignment. I also loved how Agnes saves a stray kitten in a parking lot and then tries to hide it in her coat from a grocery store clerk. When the cat mews and pops her head out, Agnes continues to deny she’s carrying a kitten, barely suppressing the sly curl to her lips.
Throughout, Victor gives a stunning performance, so subtle and nuanced, and she gets wonderful work from all those in support too. Naomi Ackie, Lucas Hedges, John Carroll Lynch, Kelly McCormack, and Hettienne Park all make vivid impressions. The characters, the dialogue, the editing – it all feels startling and fresh. The film made me gasp in shock once or twice, and gasp in delight a dozen times too.
SORRY, BABY is a small, intimate cinematic experience filled with deep thinking, light humor, and rich characters. And it’s a debut film from an extraordinary new talent in Eva Victor that I cannot recommend highly enough.
