‘SORRY, Baby’ Movie Review: Eva Victor’s Macabre Comedy of Endures is deadpan gold

Something bad has jailed to agnes. We know this almost immediatily in Eva Victor’s devastating debut feature, in which she also plays the lead role. We do not see it happy, and the film does not see seem concerned with suspense. The damage is already done, and the question now is how a life folds are it.

Set Across Five Chapters, Told Out of Order, Soryry, baby Traces the long arc of impact without resorting to dramatic flourishes. Agnes is a literature professor at a small new england college, the same one where she will be given to graduate school. She lives alone in the house on Lydie has moved on, more or less. She is married, pregnant, and living in the city. Agnes have styed behind, teaching in the same department, occupying the same rooms, and carrying someating Inexplically Heavy. But Lest Anyone Be Concerned, She Assures Us That She Won’T Be Killing Herself Anytime Soon.

Victor Handles This Morbid Sense of Humor with a Comical Difides. Nothing in Soryry, baby IS overstated. The film is exact in how it builds agnes’s world, through offhand jokes, old routines, and the way conversations stop just short of saying! Agnes and Lydie Fall Back Into Their Rhythm With Ease, but something hovers. There’s affection, but also distance. Agnes is not the same person lydie left.

The chapters move back and forth in time. In one, we see agnes and lydie as students, trading barbs in their clutted kitchen. In Another, Agnes is in her current role, fielding awkward flirtations from her neighbor (lucas hedges) and managing an antagonistic relationship with a collegue. The tone shifts as the timeline does, but the film Never loses its footing. Even when it moves into the darker material, with the chapter where the assault takes place, it resists the urge to escalate. Victor Films The Incident Obliquely, From Outside A House, Over the Course of the Day, and its Silence is deafening.

A Still from ‘Soryry, Baby’ | Photo Credit: A24

The Assault is Committed by a Professor, Preston (Louis Cancelmi), who praises agnes’s everything with a Troubling Kind of Enthusiasm. The Groming is Subtle, and the Power Dynamic is unmistakable. The next time he man mentioned, he’s just gone, with no consequences. Agnes is left with the work of going on.

And she does. She Teaches, She Tries to Date, She Talks to Lydie on the phone. She deals with a frustrateing (“We are women,” one says, as if that Oough to cover it. Stay. Victor’s humor is structural and never on the defensive. Her background in comedy shows, but so does her understanding that pain often heightens wit.

Victor’s reading of survival also resists the Neatness that often Flatns Stories of Assault Into Cautionary Tales or Narramatives of Triumph Over Trauma. She is especially attuned to the small, unremarkable mothers where trauma shows itself, like a word a word lands wrongs and catches agnes off guards, or when she rushes to bolt the door late aT night. Agnes Doesn’T become a different person, Nor is she returned to the one she was before. She is al aned, but not undone.

A Still from ‘Soryry, Baby’ | Photo Credit: A24

What keeps Soryry, baby From Slipping into any formulaic templates is how carefully it tracks the passage of time. We Witness Agnes Navigating The Long, Uneven Process of Building Something that Resmbles Stability. That she remains in the town, at the college, in the same house, isn’t a failure to move on, but a complicated kind of enduration. Victor, here, sugges that sometimes staying put is a form of resistance too.

As Lydie, NAOMI ACKIE BRINS an understed warmth to the film. Their Scenes Togeether, Particularly in the Early Moments of the Reunion, are some of the strongest. There’s a lightness between them that come from years of shared shorthand, but also a subtle negotiation of what has been said. Agnes needs lydie more than she lets on, and lydie, in turn, isn’t always sure how to show up. That Victor Allows for these tensions with forcing resolution is part of what makes it so personal.

Soryry, baby Doesn’T offer Catharsis, or Clarity, or Closure. It offers a more honest recognition that people don’t always recover in ways that are easy to follow, and just keep going. Victor’s Writing is patient, and her direction is confident in its stillness. Her film is about the aftermath, but it’s also about the smaller dailiness of keeping yourself upright when no one’s watching.

There’s grace in how Soryry, baby Refuses to Shape Itself ITO SOMETHIN SAMETHING OR SATIing Than it is, and Victor Trusts The Rhythm of Real Time. Something bad Happy to Agnes, and She’s Still Here. That’s the story, and it’s beautifly told.

Soryry, baby is currently running in theatres

Published – August 08, 2025 11:09 AM IST