Sorry, Baby: Terrific Sad-Funny Debut About Trauma Heralds Major Incoming Talent
By Kim Hughes
Rating: A
Sorry, Baby, the feature debut of American writer-director Eva Victor, who also stars, is a clear announcement of an original new talent able to create highly inventive visuals with a limited budget. It is also a terrific — and sad and funny and contemplative — testimony about how trauma profoundly stains people’s lives, with far-reaching and unpredictable outcomes.
The film is divided into five titled chapters spanning a few years and it follows Anges (Victor), an academic living alone in a small college town in what appears to be upstate New York. Things open with Agnes ecstatically greeting her best friend and former classmate Lydie (Naomi Ackie), who has driven up from New York City for a brief visit.
The pair share a relaxed, convivial bond as they gossip, watch TV, and simply hang out. But there are undercurrents of something darker hinted at over a dinner with fellow former classmates as well as Lydie’s tremulous announcement of her pregnancy.
That darkness is explained in the second chapter, titled “The Year with the Bad Thing,” which skips back in time to Agnes and Lydie’s days as roommates and graduate students under enormous pressure to complete their respective theses for their charismatic and somewhat flirty advisor, Preston Decker (Louis Cancelmi).
It’s in this chapter where the bad thing that so impacts Agnes — and sculpts the subsequent narrative — occurs. Henceforth, our view of Agnes’ quirks past and present are abruptly reframed.
Three subsequent chapters move forward again to observe Agnes’ ongoing struggles dealing with her emotional pain as she navigates everyday life, from jury duty selection (excruciating) to dispatching a mouse mauled by her cat (almost unbearable, for her and for us).
Meanwhile, unexpected career advancement and an affair with her kind and clearly smitten next-door neighbour (Lucas Hedges) requires Agnes to adopt a mask of normalcy even as panic and dread continually gnaw at her edges.
Sorry, Baby is a good story well told and was notably co-produced by Moonlight director Barry Jenkins, who also co-produced Aftersun, another impressive debut, by Charlotte Wells.
But what really distinguishes Sorry, Baby is Victor’s comfort in allowing scenes to unfold very slowly and often largely within the viewer’s imagination. For example, the climactic document of Agnes’ life-changing event is seen from outside the house where it’s happening.
After Agnes enters and closes the door, we watch, unnerved, as morning turns to afternoon, then to evening as interior lights blaze. Agnes suddenly exits. It’s a simple but superbly powerful way of creating tension, knowing imagination can often outdistance reality when it comes to scary things.
Similarly, great intimacy is fostered through lingering and extreme closeups of characters. The audience is given time to examine features and expressions as if in real life. That’s deployed to great effect in Sorry, Baby’s tender denouement, which gives the film its title and is heartbreaking and life-affirming all at once.
Sorry, Baby premiered at Sundance, where it drew acclaim, and it served as the closing film of the Directors’ Fortnight section at the Cannes Film Festival in May. It also should arrive with a trigger warning, as it contains vivid descriptions of sexual assault and suicidal ideation.
Sorry, Baby. Written and directed by Eva Victor. Starring Eva Victor, Naomi Ackie, Lucas Hedges, Louis Cancelmi and Kelly McCormack. In theatres July 4.