Director: Eva Victor (USA, Spain, France). Year of Release: 2025
A lonely house in the middle of nowhere. A car pulls up, and the house’s tenant appears on the doorstep. The car’s driver and the tenant are both women in their mid to late twenties. They hug and greet each other like the old friends they are. Later, they lie entwined on the sofa under the same blanket exchanging stories about bad sexual encounters with men. They are joyous with each other, childish even. But you feel that this giddy mood will not inhabit the whole film as one of them is carrying a dark secret.
But first the good news. Lydie announces to her friend Agnes that she is pregnant. Agnes is ecstatic for her old friend, but promises not to mention the news at this evening’s event – a dinner party with boring friends from University. The evening does not go well. When Lydie tells the others that Agnes has been offered a professorship – she will become the youngest ever prof at their old college – their “friends” look more jealous than pleased. The evening ends with Lydie making a scene about a bone in her fish.
We move back in time to when Agnes and Lydie were still at college. Lydie was a decent enough student but Agnes was brilliant, the favourite of their tutor Preston Decker. She in turn is a great fan of the novel which Decker wrote. One day, he calls her to a meeting to discuss her dissertation, then has to cancel the meeting because of child problems with his ex. The rescheduled meeting is to be in his house. It’s a small college town, so Agnes thinks nothing of walking over, and knocking on Decker’s door.
The following scene is the most crucial in the film, although virtually no information is conveyed directly. As Agnes enters the house, the camera stays outside. We hear her asking if she should remove her boots, then nothing. The sky becomes grey, then black, but all we see is a house with lights on downstairs. After what must have been hours, Agnes leaves quickly in what looks like a distressed state. A minute later, Decker appears at the door. He looks out, but does not follow his student.
The rest of the film shows Agnes dealing with her “Bad Thing.” When Agnes gets home, Lydie tells her to have a bath from which she tells her friend what has happened. Agnes does not say much but she says enough. Time passes and Lydie leaves for New York to have a life, a baby, and a relationship. Agnes, in turn, adopts a cat. Later in the film, when Agnes has a panic attack and a concerned stranger asks if she is OK, her reply: “Yes, I have a cat” tells him and us all we need to know.
We are never told more than we need to know about Agnes’s Bad Thing – this is not a voyeuristic film which revels in someone else’s misery. Later on, when Agnes is called for jury service, a lawyer clearly describes the difference between “corroborating evidence”, for which you can provide proof and “circumstantial evidence”, which is only based on reasonable assumptions. Sorry, Baby only provides us with circumstantial evidence, although this is sufficient.
If Agnes’s reaction to her Bad Thing is understandable, the behaviour of the people who are supposed to be protecting her is indefensible. A male doctor with a callous bedside manner tells Agnes that he knows it is hard to talk about, leading Lydie to retort: “It doesn’t feel like you know that.” Meanwhile (female) university authorities claim to empathise because “we are women”, but are unable to do anything because Decker has left their employment. After Lydie leaves, Agnes is left on her own.
This is a film which effectively uses rapid shifts of tone. The opening scenes give us the impression that we may be about to watch a superficial film, but they are just preparing us for the depth to follow. Agnes does not respond to her tragic experiences the way she’s supposed to – her coping mechanism is to make light of something which is very, very dark. This is not what is written in the manual, but feels like a real and personal response. Sorry, Baby’s authenticity lies in it not being like other films.
With Lydie out of town, the one person to whom Agnes can relate is her neighbour Gavin, who has a talent for saying exactly the wrong thing at the wrong time. Gavin is obviously besotted by Agnes and you’d be excused for thinking that his neediness is not exactly what she needs at the moment. But somehow his lack of self-regard makes him able to provide stability at a time when she is going slowly off the rails. A relationship between Agnes and Gavin just should not work, but in a way, it does.
Gavin is played by Lucas Hedges. I read a review which reminded me that it’s less than a decade since Hedges’s breakthrough film Manchester by the Sea, after which he seemed to be in everything going. I didn’t get too excited, either by that film, or by Hedges’s subsequent performances, in which – if I remember rightly – he was touted as being something of a dreamboat. Here he is more vulnerable, more human, and I found him much more likeable and relatable.
Agnes deals with her problems in a realistic way which is rarely shown in films which cover similar subjects. She does not go to the police. Of course she doesn’t. It’s not just that she doesn’t trust the cops, nor because she does not want to put herself through any more trauma than she has experienced already. She does not think that involving the law would solve anything. She wants Decker to be the sort of person who doesn’t do Bad Things. Imprisoning him would just make him someone in jail who does Bad Things.
I went to see Sorry, Baby because I loved the trailer, but if possible I would advise going to see it blind. Some scenes don’t work quite as well if you’ve seen them already. But this marks Eva Victor as a multi-talent to watch. She is an intelligent and witty writer and director, but as an actor she also plays Agnes with the right level of gawkiness. Agnes is a very flawed hero. She is socially awkward, someone for whom you would feel both fondness and annoyance. As such, she embodies this quirky film.
CinePhil 