The baby and the bathwater
Sorry, Baby is an absolute miracle of tone control. Eva Victor, the writer, director, and star, is a savant in her debut, mapping every emotional swerve with incredible precision. And there sure are a lot of swerves here: This is one of the funniest movies of the year and a gutting portrait of the trauma of sexual abuse. It’s tender and dark and silly, ebbing and flowing through moods without ever cashing in on the cheap manipulations of any of them. Whether or not Victor can replicate this achievement for the rest of her career — Sorry, Baby feels so singular that I genuinely struggle to picture what her next movie even looks like — she’s contributed something special to the indie dramedy canon, and I don’t say that lightly.
And yet I’m a little hesitant to rave too much, for a couple of reasons. First, the movie is kind of strange; not as idiosyncratic or surreal as Ham on Rye (another film I felt self-conscious about fawning over), but clearly the product of a quirky, off-center viewpoint. Second, it tackles a fearless sprawl of ideas and moments: some angst, some romance, some dry one-liners, some borderline slapstick. That blend won’t hit the same for everyone. The humor tickles against the bruise; at other moments, the melancholy lingers when you expect the film to look away. I adored that elasticity, but I can also imagine others bouncing off it.
Sorry, Baby tells the story of Agnes (Eva Victor), who starts the film as a grad student at a mossy New England liberal-arts college, orbiting a tight advising circle with her closest friend Lydie (Naomi Ackie) and the department’s star professor, Preston Decker (Louis Cancelmi). An after-hours visit to Decker’s home turns into a nightmare with an off-screen rape, witnessed entirely through Agnes’s shell-shocked morning after, and the university promptly offers empty procedure without justice or remedy. The film hopscotches across Agnes’s recovery and the years that follow. She adopts a cat she finds in the middle of the road. A bittersweet twist of fate occurs when Agnes receives a prestigious faculty appointment herself, but gets assigned her assailant’s old office, setting off another spiral. Meanwhile, Lydie drifts further away from Agnes with her own life story, falling in love and expecting her first child.
On paper, the film’s premise invites two traps: First, the masochistic gauntlet of bummers that come with “trauma cinema,” and second, the noodling aimlessness of an episodic diary story with no single overarching narrative. Victor keenly dodges both. She keeps re-framing the central psychological wound rather than re-exploiting it, so each consideration of it feels like a new insight rather than another whack to the shins with a crowbar. And the non-linear structure prevents drift and drag, giving the story curiosity and momentum as we find Agnes’s bearings with each subsequent time hop, while still managing to avoid excessive cuteness or exertion in telling the story unconventionally
The real attraction here is the portrait of Agnes, and Victor’s performance is wonderfully rangy. She plays prickly without nastiness, neurotic without shame, and vulnerable without pleading. Victor has a wiry screen presence to her that makes tossed-off lines and facial expressions land with some combination of tragic and hysterical. Her comic timing is excellent, with a dry and intuitive delivery. What I find most impressive is how much personality she packs into the negative space: little fidgets and flinty smiles that are not showy but revelatory. Victor’s name is sure to be on my shortlist of best performances of the year for the 2025 B.A.D.S.
Victor also surrounds Agnes with a terrific gallery of supporters you’re glad to have on screen. Lydie is the most conventional of the bunch, a perfect best friend so attentive and patient she risks sanctimony, but Ackie colors the character with her charm and magnetic smile. Gavin (Lucas Hedges) offers a gentle, funny corrective to Agnes’s gathering cynicism around men and sexuality; Hedges plays him with unrushed, guileless warmth; their post-coital bathtub conversation is one of the better scenes of the year. I also love Pete (John Carroll Lynch), a sympathetic sandwich shop owner who appears for one scene and has the exact right things to say.
Formally, the movie is comfortably in the indie lane. Mia Cioffi Henry’s cinematography is clean and unfussy but unremarkable, and Victor’s direction offers mostly conventional spaces and framing, with some inviting New England autumnal chill for flavor. Alex O’Flinn and Randi Atkins’s editing keeps the timeline from unspooling into confusion or boredom, and they nail the punch of a few key images and moments. When Victor does press, you feel it: the sequence of Agnes reacting to her assault tense and unflinching, bordering into thriller for a few minutes without tipping into exploitation. It’s not a showy package, and I don’t think it needs to be; the craft here mainly gets out of the performances’ way.
Sorry, Baby separates itself from the pack of “well-observed” debuts (Good One and Janet Planet and company) not through some showy formal breakthrough but through an astonishing grip on tone and timing. Its boldness is the blend: bone-dry comedy braided with sexual abuse survivorship; its brilliance is the beauty and burnish of both ends of the emotional spectrum. Not every single moment works; Agnes teaching Lolita is a bit on-the-nose, and the university’s doctors and administrators are a bit unbelievably cold. But this is a triumph with astonishingly few missteps. Victor keeps choosing the gentler, trickier path: jokes as oxygen, silence as aggression, recovery as a crooked road. The film keeps landing in that rare space of well-earned, non-pandering empathy. When the credits rolled, my heart had expanded. Sorry, Baby is one of the best films of the year.
Is It Good?
Exceptionally Good (7/8)
Dan is the founder and head critic of The Goods. Follow Dan on Letterboxd. Join the Discord for updates and discussion.