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Chicago Tribune
03-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Chicago Tribune
Review: ‘Sorry, Baby' is a witty, moving portrait of life in the aftermath of a college assault
'Write what you know' only gets you so far. An awful lot of debut films, even from writer-directors with talent, start from a personal place only to end up at a weirdly impersonal 'universal' one you don't fully believe, or trust. 'Sorry, Baby' is so, so much better than that. Eva Victor's first feature as writer-director, and star, feels like a lived experience, examined, cross-examined, ruminated over, carefully shaped and considered. Its tone is unexpected, predominantly but not cynically comic. The movie doesn't settle for 'write what you know.' Victor followed a tougher, more challenging internal directive: Write what you need to find out about what you know. The story deals with a college sexual assault, without being 'about' that, or only about that. 'Sorry, Baby' concerns how Agnes, the sharp-witted protagonist played by Victor, makes sense of her present tense, several years after she was mentored, then raped, by her favorite professor, with the bad thing now in the past but hardly out of sight, or arranges the telling non-chronologically, which keeps this liquid notion of past and present flowing as a complicated emotional state. When 'Sorry, Baby' begins, Agnes is thriving as an English literature professor at the same tiny New England college she attended as a graduate student. She now lives near campus with her cat in a somewhat remote old house, crammed with books. Lydie, Agnes's good friend from grad school played by the superb Naomi Ackie, has come for a visit, and the magical rightness of the interplay between Victor and Ackie gives the film a warm, energizing hum. At one point, Lydie asks her if she leaves the house much. Agnes responds verbally, but her body language, her evasive eyes and other 'tells' have their own say. Lydie's question lingers in the air, just before we're taken back to Agnes and Lydie's grad school years for the film's next chapter. Here we see Agnes on the cusp of her future, surrounded by ideas and novels and opinions, as well as an envious fellow student (Kelly McCormack, a touch broad as written and played in the film's one tonal misjudgment). Agnes' writing has attracted the attention of the campus conversation topic Decker (Louis Cancelmi), a faculty member with a faulty marriage and a barely-read but undeniably published novel Agnes admires. The admiration is mutual, even if the power dynamic is not. At the last minute, the teacher reschedules his meeting with Agnes to take place at his house near campus. We see Agnes arrive, be greeted at the door and go inside. The camera stays outside, down the steps and by the sidewalk, for an unusually long time. Finally she tumbles, more or less, back out on the porch; it's getting dark by this time; Decker appears in the doorway, trying to apologize, sort of? Kind of? And the scene is over. Only later do we learn some unnerving particulars of what happened to Agnes, once she is ready, finally, to talk about it with Lydie. 'Sorry, Baby,' as Victor said in one post-screening discussion, began with the notion of how to film the assault — meaning, what not to show. 'In real life,' the filmmaker said, 'we don't get to be behind the door. We hear what happened and we believe people. (And) we don't need to be inside to know.' From there, 'Sorry, Baby' continues its flow back and forth, in the years in between what happened and where Agnes is now. There's an eccentric neighbor (Lucas Hedges, unerring) who initially appears to be call-the-police material, but it doesn't work out that way at all. Lifelines can come from anywhere, Agnes learns, and expressing oneself honestly and directly is easier said than done. Throughout this precisely written film, we see and hear Agnes caught in weird language-built labyrinths as she squares off with the college's HR department while attempting to file a report against the professor, or — much later — Agnes at jury duty selection for an unrelated matter, explaining the incident in her past to her questioner in weirdly funny ways. Victor's a tightrope-walker in these scenes; 'Sorry, Baby' is as much about everyone around Agnes, performing their understanding, or concern, regarding the Bad Thing in her past. Some of the more overt bits of bleak comedy are better finessed than others, and you wouldn't mind another five or 10 minutes of hangout time, complementing the well-paced overall structure. But even that's a sign of success. How many standout movies have seen this year that made you think, you know, that actually could've been a little longer? Clear-eyed, disarming and, yes, plainly semi-autobiographical, 'Sorry, Baby' takes every right turn in making Agnes far more than a tragic yet wisecracking victim, with a smiling-through-tears ending waiting around the bend. She's just living her full, up-and-down-and-up life, acknowledging the weight of that life without solving or dissolving the bad thing. This is Victor's achievement, too, of course. Already, this quietly spectacular first-time filmmaker's promise has been fulfilled. 'Sorry, Baby' — 3.5 stars (out of 4) MPA rating: R (for sexual content and language) Running time: 1:44 How to watch: Premieres in theaters July 4
Gulf Today
28-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Gulf Today
In ‘Sorry, Baby,' Eva Victor makes a disarming debut
The first thing to love about writer-director-star Eva Victor's extraordinary debut 'Sorry, Baby' is how she, as the young professor Agnes, tries, and fails, to hide a tryst with her neighbour. Agnes lives in a quaint New England home where her best friend and fellow former grad student Lydie (Naomi Ackie) is visiting. We are just getting to know each of these characters when a knock comes on the door. Gavin (Lucas Hedges) stands outside confused when Lydie answers. Agnes rushes over to act as though he's mistaken her house for his, and not for the first time. 'God bless your lost soul,' she says, shooing him away. The plot of 'Sorry, Baby' centres around a traumatic experience for Agnes that unfolds in a chapter titled 'The Year With the Bad Thing.' But it would be wrong to define 'Sorry, Baby' — or its singular protagonist — by that 'bad thing.' In this remarkably fully formed debut, the moments that matter are the funny and tender ones that persist amid crueler experiences. Before her script to 'Sorry, Baby' attracted Barry Jenkins as a producer, Victor did improv and made comic social media videos. And the degree to which she's effectively channeled her sly sense of humour and full-bodied resistance to cliche makes 'Sorry, Baby' the immediately apparent revelation of a disarmingly offbeat new voice. The film unfolds in five chapters from across five years of Agnes' life, told out of chronology. That, in itself, is a way to place the 'bad thing' of 'Sorry, Baby' in a reshuffled context. Stasis, healing and friendship are more the guiding framework of Victor's film. The opening tenor of 'Sorry, Baby' is, in a way, the prevailing one. Agnes and Lydie (a terrific Ackie) are best pals whose jokey chemistry is as natural as their protectiveness of each other. At a dinner with their former literature grad students, Lydie clasps Agnes' hand under the table at the mention of their former thesis adviser. In the second chapter, the 'bad thing' one, we find out why. In an unnamed New England liberal arts school, their professor, Preston Decker (Louis Cancelmi), is charming and perceptive. He recognizes Agnes' intelligence and seems to respect her — which makes his betrayal all the more shattering. When the location of one of their meetings shifts last-minute to his home, Victor's camera waits outside while day turns to night. Only when Agnes exits, ashen and horrified, do we pick back up with her as she gets in the car and drives. In the aftermath, the trauma of the rape spills out of Agnes in unpredictable ways and at unexpected moments. With Lydie. Visiting a doctor. At jury duty. With a stray cat. These encounters — some heartwarming, some insensitive — are both Agnes' way of awkwardly processing what she went through and the movie's way of accentuating how people around you, friend or stranger, have a choice of empathy. Most movingly, in the chapter 'The Year With the Good Sandwich,' John Carroll Lynch plays a man who finds her having a panic attack, and sweetly sits down with her in a parking lot. Agnes doesn't process her experience the way a movie character might be expected to — with, say, revenge or sudden catharsis. Hers is a sporadic, often absurd healing that includes turning up at her neighbor's house to borrow some lighter fluid. Lydie is key. This is in many ways a portrait of a friendship, and a particularly lived-in one at that. What it's not so much is a story about sexual assault. Just as Agnes is sarcastically and self-deprecatingly resistant to convention, Victor's film sidesteps the definitions that usually accompany such a story. Originality becomes a kind of survival. Associated Press
Los Angeles Times
27-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
In ‘Sorry, Baby,' a young professor harbors private pain and a new voice emerges
Agnes (Eva Victor) has the face of a classical Hollywood movie star but she dresses like an old fisherman. Her expressions are inscrutable; you never know what's going to come out of her mouth or how. When asked on a written questionnaire how her friends would describe her, she puts down 'smart,' crosses it out, then replaces it with 'tall.' She is all of those things: tall, smart, striking, endearingly awkward, hard to read. And she is an utterly captivating, entirely unique cinematic presence, the planet around which orbits 'Sorry, Baby,' the debut feature of Victor, who not only stars but writes and directs. Agnes' backstory, revealed in time, is a distressingly common one of sexual assault, recounted with bursts of wild honesty, searing insight and unexpected humor. Victor's screenplay earned her the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award at the Sundance Film Festival this year, where the film had its premiere. As a writer and performer, Victor allows Agnes to relay what happened in her own way while keeping the most intimate horrors protected. Set in the frigid environs of the English department at a rural Massachusetts university, 'Sorry, Baby' carries a literary quality, emphasized by nonchronological titled chapters (e.g., 'The Year With the Baby,' 'The Year With the Bad Thing,') carefully establishing our protagonist, the world she inhabits and a few nagging questions. Agnes is a professor of English at the university where she completed her graduate studies, but we first meet her as the best friend of Lydie (Naomi Ackie), who arrives for a winter weekend visit. Two codependent besties reunited, they snuggle on the couch and laugh about sex. Lydie delights at the mystery man who turns up on her friend's doorstep — a friendly, familiar neighbor named Gavin (Lucas Hedges). But Lydie's quiet concern for her friend is also palpable. When she reveals her pregnancy to Agnes, she says, 'There's something I need to tell you about my body,' as if Agnes is a child who needs gentle explanation. And in a strange way, Agnes seems to take to this childlike role with her friend. Lydie carefully probes her about her office and its previous occupant. She presses her about remaining in this town. Isn't it 'a lot'? 'It's a lot to be wherever,' Agnes replies. Lydie requests of her, 'Don't die' and Agnes reassures her she would have already killed herself if she was going to. It's cold comfort, a phrase that could capably describe the entire vibe of 'Sorry, Baby.' Victor then flips back to an earlier chapter, before their graduation, to a time when Agnes seems less calcified in her idiosyncrasies. Their thesis advisor, Preston Decker (Louis Cancelmi), handsome and harried, tells Agnes her work is 'extraordinary' and reschedules a meeting due to a child-care emergency. They both end up at his home, where dusk turns to night. What ensues is what you expect and dread, though we only hear about it when Agnes recounts the excruciating details of the incident to Lydie later that night. The fallout renders Agnes emotionally stunted, running alternately on autopilot and impulse. Lydie fiercely protects (and enables) her friend until she has to move on with her life, leaving Agnes frozen in amber in that house, that office, that town, that night. There's an architectural quality to Victor's style in the film's structure and thoughtful editing, and in the lingering shots of buildings standing starkly against an icy sky, glowing windows beckoning or concealing from within: a representation of a singular kind of brittle, poignant New England stoicism. Victor captures Agnes the same way. Thanks to the profound and nuanced honesty Victor extracts from each moment, 'Sorry, Baby' is a movie that lingers. Even when Agnes does something outlandish or implausible — turning up on foot at Gavin's door in a tizzy is one of her curious quirks — it feels true to the character. But Agnes is a mystery even to herself, it seems, tamping down her feelings until they come tumbling out in strange ways. She goes about her daily life in a never-ending cycle of repression and explosion, cracking until she shatters completely. Her most important journey is to find a place to be soft again. The only catharsis or healing to be found in the film comes from the titular apology, more a rueful word of caution than anything else. We can never be fully protected from what life has in store for us, nor from the acts of selfishness or cruelty that cause us to harden and retreat into the protective cocoon of a huge jacket, a small town, an empty house. Life — and the people in it — will break us sometimes. But there are still kittens and warm baths and best friends and really good sandwiches. There are still artists like Victor who share stories like this with such detailed emotion. Sometimes that's enough to glue us back together, at least for a little while.
Hamilton Spectator
26-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Hamilton Spectator
Movie Review: In ‘Sorry, Baby,' Eva Victor makes a disarming debut
The first thing to love about writer-director-star Eva Victor's extraordinary debut 'Sorry, Baby' is how she, as the young professor Agnes, tries, and fails, to hide a tryst with her neighbor. Agnes lives in a quaint New England home where her best friend and fellow former grad student Lydie (Naomi Ackie) is visiting. We are just getting to know each of these characters when a knock comes on the door. Gavin (Lucas Hedges) stands outside confused when Lydie answers. Agnes rushes over to act as though he's mistaken her house for his, and not for the first time. 'God bless your lost soul,' she says, shooing him away. The plot of 'Sorry, Baby' centers around a traumatic experience for Agnes that unfolds in a chapter titled 'The Year With the Bad Thing.' But it would be wrong to define 'Sorry, Baby' — or its singular protagonist — by that 'bad thing.' In this remarkably fully formed debut, the moments that matter are the funny and tender ones that persist amid crueler experiences. Before her script to 'Sorry, Baby' attracted Barry Jenkins as a producer, Victor did improv and made comic social media videos. And the degree to which she's effectively channeled her sly sense of humor and full-bodied resistance to cliche makes 'Sorry, Baby' the immediately apparent revelation of a disarmingly offbeat new voice. The film unfolds in five chapters from across five years of Agnes' life, told out of chronology. That, in itself, is a way to place the 'bad thing' of 'Sorry, Baby' in a reshuffled context. Stasis, healing and friendship are more the guiding framework of Victor's film. The opening tenor of 'Sorry, Baby' is, in a way, the prevailing one. Agnes and Lydie (a terrific Ackie) are best pals whose jokey chemistry is as natural as their protectiveness of each other. At a dinner with their former literature grad students, Lydie clasps Agnes' hand under the table at the mention of their former thesis adviser. In the second chapter, the 'bad thing' one, we find out why. In an unnamed New England liberal arts school, their professor, Preston Decker (Louis Cancelmi), is charming and perceptive. He recognizes Agnes' intelligence and seems to respect her — which makes his betrayal all the more shattering. When the location of one of their meetings shifts last-minute to his home, Victor's camera waits outside while day turns to night. Only when Agnes exits, ashen and horrified, do we pick back up with her as she gets in the car and drives. In the aftermath, the trauma of the rape spills out of Agnes in unpredictable ways and at unexpected moments. With Lydie. Visiting a doctor. At jury duty. With a stray cat. These encounters — some heartwarming, some insensitive — are both Agnes' way of awkwardly processing what she went through and the movie's way of accentuating how people around you, friend or stranger, have a choice of empathy. Most movingly, in the chapter 'The Year With the Good Sandwich,' John Carroll Lynch plays a man who finds her having a panic attack, and sweetly sits down with her in a parking lot. Agnes doesn't process her experience the way a movie character might be expected to — with, say, revenge or sudden catharsis. Hers is a sporadic, often absurd healing that includes turning up at her neighbor's house to borrow some lighter fluid. Lydie is key. This is in many ways a portrait of a friendship, and a particularly lived-in one at that. What it's not so much is a story about sexual assault. Just as Agnes is sarcastically and self-deprecatingly resistant to convention, Victor's film sidesteps the definitions that usually accompany such a story. Originality becomes a kind of survival. 'Sorry, Baby,' an A24 release is rated R by the Motion Picture Association for sexual content and language. Running time: 104 minutes. Three and a half stars out of four.
25-06-2025
- Entertainment
Movie Review: In 'Sorry, Baby,' Eva Victor makes a disarming debut
The first thing to love about writer-director-star Eva Victor's extraordinary debut 'Sorry, Baby' is how she, as the young professor Agnes, tries, and fails, to hide a tryst with her neighbor. Agnes lives in a quaint New England home where her best friend and fellow former grad student Lydie (Naomi Ackie) is visiting. We are just getting to know each of these characters when a knock comes on the door. Gavin (Lucas Hedges) stands outside confused when Lydie answers. Agnes rushes over to act as though he's mistaken her house for his, and not for the first time. 'God bless your lost soul,' she says, shooing him away. The plot of 'Sorry, Baby' centers around a traumatic experience for Agnes that unfolds in a chapter titled 'The Year With the Bad Thing.' But it would be wrong to define 'Sorry, Baby' — or its singular protagonist — by that 'bad thing.' In this remarkably fully formed debut, the moments that matter are the funny and tender ones that persist amid crueler experiences. Before her script to 'Sorry, Baby' attracted Barry Jenkins as a producer, Victor did improv and made comic social media videos. And the degree to which she's effectively channeled her sly sense of humor and full-bodied resistance to cliche makes 'Sorry, Baby' the immediately apparent revelation of a disarmingly offbeat new voice. The film unfolds in five chapters from across five years of Agnes' life, told out of chronology. That, in itself, is a way to place the 'bad thing' of 'Sorry, Baby' in a reshuffled context. Stasis, healing and friendship are more the guiding framework of Victor's film. The opening tenor of 'Sorry, Baby' is, in a way, the prevailing one. Agnes and Lydie (a terrific Ackie) are best pals whose jokey chemistry is as natural as their protectiveness of each other. At a dinner with their former literature grad students, Lydie clasps Agnes' hand under the table at the mention of their former thesis adviser. In the second chapter, the 'bad thing' one, we find out why. In an unnamed New England liberal arts school, their professor, Preston Decker (Louis Cancelmi), is charming and perceptive. He recognizes Agnes' intelligence and seems to respect her — which makes his betrayal all the more shattering. When the location of one of their meetings shifts last-minute to his home, Victor's camera waits outside while day turns to night. Only when Agnes exits, ashen and horrified, do we pick back up with her as she gets in the car and drives. In the aftermath, the trauma of the rape spills out of Agnes in unpredictable ways and at unexpected moments. With Lydie. Visiting a doctor. At jury duty. With a stray cat. These encounters — some heartwarming, some insensitive — are both Agnes' way of awkwardly processing what she went through and the movie's way of accentuating how people around you, friend or stranger, have a choice of empathy. Most movingly, in the chapter 'The Year With the Good Sandwich,' John Carroll Lynch plays a man who finds her having a panic attack, and sweetly sits down with her in a parking lot. Agnes doesn't process her experience the way a movie character might be expected to — with, say, revenge or sudden catharsis. Hers is a sporadic, often absurd healing that includes turning up at her neighbor's house to borrow some lighter fluid. Lydie is key. This is in many ways a portrait of a friendship, and a particularly lived-in one at that. What it's not so much is a story about sexual assault. Just as Agnes is sarcastically and self-deprecatingly resistant to convention, Victor's film sidesteps the definitions that usually accompany such a story. Originality becomes a kind of survival.
