How do you rebuild your sense of self after a traumatic event? There lies the question at the heart of Eva Victor's charmingly sincere and very funny feature debut – a nuanced, character-driven story that Victor wrote, directed, and takes the star-making lead in.
Agnes is an English literature lecturer at a liberal arts college in New England, and she’s stuck in a rut. Still living in the same house as she did while a grad student, through five weighty but witty chapters, some told in flashback, we understand why she’s become emotionally tethered to the same place.
It opens in the present day, with her best friend Lydie (Naomi Ackie) arriving for a visit after a long separation. They easily fall back into their matey banter, with the actors exuding a deep intimacy that makes their friendship so cosy and believable. But there’s underlying tension in the fact that Lydie’s life so far has more propulsion. She’s married and expecting her first child, which only highlights Agnes’s professional and personal inertia.
You see, a ‘serious thing’ happened to Agnes during her studies. The self-deprecating star pupil of her class, led by handsome literature professor Preston Decker (Louis Cancelmi), she, maybe naively, trusts him to be the good man he appears to be. Victor admirably uses delicate care in the depiction of Decker’s sexual assault of Agnes. We don’t see it, yet in her retelling to Lydie, how she navigates the aftermath with the college’s disciplinary board and herself, the devastation of this cruel act is not lost.
It refuses to kowtow to the reductive binary of hero or villain
It's in these almost mundane moments, enlivened by Lia Ouyang Rusli’s warmly melancholic score, that the film’s emotional power reverberates. Victor understands just how excruciating trauma can be when it manifests at unexpected times and in awkward places. Whether that be a dinner party with old friends, jury duty or even while driving in her car, these scenarios are bolstered with dry wit, gallows humour and a supporting cast offering lightness even at its darkest.
Lucas Hedges and John Michael Carroll, in particular, provide some heartfelt relief. Hedges as Agnes’s earnest neighbour-turned-lover and Carroll as a sandwich shop owner who shows kindness to her at a pivotal moment. Then there’s Kelly McCormack, who plays Agnes’s peer Natasha with such thinly-veiled animosity it’s absurdly amusing.
Sorry, Baby is a captivating comedy-drama that avoids the reductive binary of hero or villain. Instead, Victor articulates the flaws of humanity, of people, but also the hope we can find in each other and ourselves.
In UK and Ireland cinemas Fri Aug 22. In US cinemas now.