Irreverent humour and empathy in the eye of a storm are key to resilience in Eva Victor’s Sundance-celebrated debut, in which an abuse of power throws a lit student’s existence into disarray.
Eva Victor’s darkly funny and enormously tender drama announces her as a filmmaking talent to watch.
Sorry, Baby 2025
Bad things will happen – and they can sweep through a life like a cyclone. Comedian and internet personality Eva Victor’s debut feature is an acerbically funny, deeply human exploration of this inevitability, the precarity of safety in the world for women, and their solidarity as an antidote to despair. Victor stars as Agnes, a star English lit grad student at a college in rural New England, whose sense of self is totally derailed when her thesis supervisor sexually assaults her.
The film, which has Moonlight director Barry Jenkins as a producer, is fragmented into sections occurring years apart. It’s concerned less with the day in question than with its aftermath, and is a disarmingly honest portrait (joining the lineage of shows like Fleabag or I May Destroy You) of the way trauma can make a person stuck, their future obscured. Agnes spirals into evermore eccentric coping mechanisms, even as she stays high-functioning in her career and gains a tenured teaching post. Her friend Lydie (Naomi Ackie) persists as a steady anchor, amid the alienating reactions of others. — Carmen Gray