Sorry, Baby

Seventy-five minutes into Eva Victor’s spectacular debut Sorry, Baby, our heroine Agnes- played by Victor herself- sits on the curb of a motorway after a panic attack. Midway through a particularly good sandwich, she explains to the kind stranger who’s just helped her (John Carroll) why she hasn’t followed the ‘traditional’ timeline of marriage and babies: “Something pretty bad happened to me.” It’s a moment that encapsulates the film’s emotional core—the way trauma, as Victor described in a recent interview, is like a stone that “gets shoved into the river of your life.”

The “bad thing” happened three years earlier, when Agnes- clearly top of her class in her literature postgrad- was sexually assaulted by her professor. All we see of the event is his house from across the road: an eerie, understated image made more unsettling by its lack of visual violence. The film moves fluidly around the attack, but its focus remains refreshingly on the aftermath- and on Agnes herself. The perpetrator may have altered the course of her life, but we spend minimal time with him; Agnes is far more compelling.

Her relationship with best friend Lydie (Naomi Ackie) becomes the central lens through which we explore the emotional fallout. In the opening scene, a pregnant and in-love Naomi visits Agnes, who still lives in the same house and town where they once studied together. With Lydie’s chirpy optimism perfectly complementing Victor’s deadpan humour, they form a duo worthy of cult status. Agnes wants Naomi to visit more often but feels the need to promise it’s not because she might do anything “bad.” Lydie’s life is flowing forward; Agnes’s has been disrupted by that immovable stone. The quiet tragedy of mourning a once all-consuming platonic love- as priorities shift and new families are formed- is achingly relatable.

Despite its dark themes, Sorry, Baby is, above all, extremely funny. Victor’s writing is wry and sharply observant, with a matter-of-fact tone reminiscent of Desiree Akhavan. This allows the film to satirize the inadequacies of institutional responses to trauma—from a comically indifferent nurse to an all-female English department who, despite their helplessness, insist they “understand” because they are women.

Yet through it all, hope beams defiantly. Agnes is still reeling, but her brilliance remains undimmed. She’s just become the youngest new teaching fellow at her university—much to the annoyance of a hilariously envious colleague (Kelly McCormack). A potential romance is budding with her endearingly awkward neighbour, Gavin (Lucas Hedges), and while her relationship with Naomi is evolving, it’s clear their bond will never truly fade. It’s this complex, nuanced portrayal of victimhood- punctuated by joy, sadness, and absurdity- that makes Sorry, Baby such a vital addition to the genre.