Whatever expectations you may have of trauma narratives, writer-director-actor Victor Eva twists them with remarkable tragicomic volatility in her debut, Sorry, Baby. It’s as tonally surprising as it shears off re-victimization. Agnes (Eva) grapples with the fallout of an attack for years. It may not wholly stunt her life but singes every waking night. She tries to shove aside the memory however it underpins her anticipatory moments. The attack leaves🦩 her profoundly affected; it remains curled up deep within, rising at sudden intervals. Her guardedness tightens. She may think she’s kept demarcated her private life and one as a professor noticeably loved by her students and admired by colleagues. But Victor shows the lines blur.
Agnes has stuck to her New England rural home her entire life. Leaping in non-linear chapters across a five-year-span, the film p🍒ivots around Agnes, without wedging itself too much in elaborate, posturingly naturalistic self-dissection. Unlike her peers, she didn’t move away from grad school. We see her as a student, brilliant and incisive and attracting the attention of their advisor, Preston Decker (Louis Cancelmi). Her closest friend Lydie (Naomi Ackie) teases her about flirting with Decker. She laughs it off. What seems as a casual, friendly equation between the student and the professor mutates into the horrific. Eva doesn’t capture the sexual assault. From a distance, we watch Agnes as she shows up at Decker’s house. He’d called her to discuss her thesis. The morning shades into night when she finally exits. The inkling is immediate. Something has happened. Distance in framing gradually reduces as she appears closer, looking distraught, a shoe in hand and barely pulling herself together. She’s rac🅷ked by disbelief at what just happened. Eva precisely maps the initial reflex of the assailed to genuflect to self-doubt, the slow realization of the full horror. Sorry, Baby has one of the year’s most potently devastating close-up confessional scenes, as Agnes processes her attack, recounting the episode in crushing specificity down to her insistent efforts to “move his hand away”.
Except her only friend, she is failed constantly wherever she turns. There’s rarely empathy, just an awkward bumbling around to do the ‘right’ thing, use the correct verbiage, while being incredibly insensitive. Sorry, Baby is defined by its acerbic gaze. When Agnes approaches the school committee with the assault complaint, the pivotal ensuing conversation is conducted in the most bluntly disrespectful manner. The committee starts acting particular about the small window between her filing the complaint and the accused’s resignation. All sorts of genuflections are tossed. Her complaint came many hours after Louis’ resignation, they point out. He’s already transferred himself to another workplace. Thus, he is no longer their employee and they wouldn’t be able to take action. Even as they distance themselves from her situation, removing scope for responsibility, they throw scraps of fake empathy: “we are women”. everything about the scene parades the HR-keeling booby traps of authorities and institutions, pulling back where support is needed and citing any kind of technical✃ loophole to expunge their own ne☂cessity of hard conversation. Compassion gets kicked in the hurry and deception of crisis management.
No relief floods in; not a word of admission sweeps in. Agnes is struck by how “scared” everyone acts whenever she chooses to open up. But with each time, she’s betrayed increasingly. Everyone either actively dissociates, or behaves like they don’t know what to do about it. This makes Agnes only stiffen furthermore her guard, not letting people in or have some shape of social life. She returns from work and shuts herself up at the house. For a while, her nice, awkward neighbour Gavin (Lucas Hedges), who has a crush on her, is firmly ignored. Agnes’ wariness is naturally borne of the wretched unreliability in the usual, official follow-up procedures. Through the grimness Eva maintains a spry, light touch. Agnes’ sharp wit and levity pro✃p up as defense mechanisms.
Sorry, Baby addresses her healing in slow, considered shifts across temporal gradations. Just having a friend who shows up through the years can sometimes carry us through the worst, even as everything feels dire and irredeemable. Through it all-Lydie’s going away and her marriage-the friendship remains as unmoving as a rock. The dependable warmth and reassurance of old friends, infused by Victor and Ackie, soothingly holds up the film, softening the press of rejection and disappointment in Agnes’ life. Sorry, Baby refuses to douse itself in belaboring melancholy. Consolations and strength can sprout from anywhere: it may be a stray cat, a bark from someone for wrong parking that turns to care. Victor wryly brightens a portrait of a woman healing, learning to unfasten herself again and wrenching on her own terms the empowerment, the kind attention she sought from others. Its final scene has the kind of self-affirming, regenerative power, ringing across cultures and generations, that instantly elevates Sorry, Baby to essential viewing.
Debanjan Dhar is covering Sundance Film Festival 2025 as part of the accredited press.
