Whatever you think about the Sundance Film Festival, there is a special kind of excitement when a movie from a first time filmmaker premieres and you just know you are discovering and witnessing the real deal.
Welcome to the “real deal” Sundance circa 2025, as tonight comedian and actress Eva Victor‘s writing and directing feature debut, Sorry, Baby in which she also stars premiered in the U.S. Dramatic Competition and provided one of the assured and heartfelt films not only of this festival, but that I have seen in a very long time.
Victor, who has appeared on shows like Billions, as well as being a standup comic proves that in her first attempt to write a movie (and eventually come to believe she could also direct it and herself in the starring role) she has a true talent as a storyteller, avoiding every pitfall, and remarkably keeping the tone of a film, its leading character the victim of a sexual assault, by showing us in non-linear fashion the toll it took for years after, as well as what led up to it. What we don’t see is the assault itself, thus this is not a film about that as much as it is about the loneliness of the person assaulted. Victor impressively plays this all out in chapters bookended by the first one titled “The Year Of The Baby” and the last one from the same year. Using the non-linear approach is so effective here because the audience isn’t aware, except brief clues strategically placed, just what has happened to her. This technique keeps us invested to go through all the stages that Victor’s character Agnes herself experiences, and it isn’t the obvious stuff as Victor manages to find dry humor in a lot of this but keeps the tricky tone balanced in a way far more experienced filmmakers might find a lot harder to do.
Storywise we meet Agnes at her home as she welcomes old friend Lydie (Naomi Ackie) but their initial conversations give us no clue of the traumatic incident in Agnes’ past. A dinner with teaching-hopeful University colleagues (Jordan Mendoza, Conor Sweeney, and Kelly McCormack) offers an early awkward moment, a visit to her teaching advisor Preston Decker ((Louis Cancelmi) in his office to talk about her thesis offers another, her fear of noises outside her home, and when she talks jokingly about killing herself, ” last year, or the year before, or definitely the year before”.
This cuts to the longest chapter, “The Year Of Bad Things” which recounts the before and after of the assault taking place in Decker’s home, his ex-wife away with their kid, where she had gone for what was more discussion of her thesis he called “extraordinary”. The camera lingers on the outside, We see lights go on , and later an abrupt exit by a shaken Agnes as Decker peers out from behind the door. In vivid close up she tells Lydie, in gut-wrenching and heartbreaking detail, about the encounter, later dealing with the bureaucracy as an unfeeling doctor chides her for not immediately going to an emergency room. “I will remember that for next time,” she snarks. The HR team of two women just give her a policy lecture. We also meet Gavin (Lucas Hedges), the sweet next door neighbor whom she borrows lighter fluid from in order to burn down Decker’s office we learn later.
Boots she wore the fateful night are tossed into a shopping bag and thrown into the closet, she adopts a kitten, and then it is on to the next chapter, “The Year With The Questions” when she is called to jury duty, and then “The Year With The Good Sandwich” which opens on her having sex with Gavin, and a particularly wonderful scene in which she stops by the road for a full-on emotional breakdown only to find a willing listener in a stranger named Pete (John Carroll Lynch) who offers her a sandwich. “Are you okay?” “I have a cat,” she replies. Finally back to the “Year With The Baby”.
The thing is Victor, as an actor or filmmaker, never telegraphs anything. We live with Agnes’ ongoing loneliness, her inability to get outside of her trauma and herself, her quirkiness and snide humor, her insecurities, her attempt to return to “normalcy”, her vindication, and all of the wounds that never go away. I hesitate to use the word “extraordinary” in describing this performance (when you see the film you will know why) but that is exactly what it is. There are so many layers to Agnes, each one slowly peeled back leading to yet another. In the end I was in tears, not just for what she goes through, but the realization that we are now in a world and country going backwards where the kind of assault Agnes experienced is being tossed aside, the perpetrators denying them and getting big jobs. It’s pathetic.
Ackie, the British star who so effectively played Whitney Houston in her biopic, in a wonderful presence here, the friend everyone should have, Hedges is appealing as a genuinely nice guy who helps Agnes to trust men again, and veteran actor Lynch is great in his brief screen time. McCormack has a more stereotypical role of a jealous colleague but serves to lighten things up with her boorish honesty about who she is.
With a largely key female production team, Victor is well supported, especially with Mia Cioffi Henry’s exceptional cinematography and Caity Birmingham’s production design. Lia Ouyang Rusli’s lilting score comes in just as its needed, and editing by Alex O’Flinn and Randi Atkins is perfectly pitched.
Big shout out to Pastel, the production company of Barry Jenkins, Adele Romanski, and Mark Ceryak who produced, encouraged, and guided Victor to what is a cinematic achievement that gives me as much hope for movies as I can possibly ask.
Sorry, Baby is looking for distribution. If it doesn’t find a major distributor who nurtures it with the care it deserves, I am going to quit because this movie has to be out there in the world for many reasons, certainly chief among them is the emergence of a filmmaker to savor.
Title: Sorry, Baby
Festival: Sundance (U.S. Dramatic Competition)
Sales Agent: UTA (Charades -International sales)
Director/Screenplay: Eva Victor
Cast: Eva Victor, Naomi Ackie, Louis Cancelmi, Kelly McCormack, Lucas Hedges, John Carroll Lynch, ER Fightmaster, Marc Carver, Liz Bishop, Natalie Rotter-Laitman, Alison Wachtler, David T. Curtis, Jordan Mendoza, Conor Sweeney.
Running Time: 1 hour and 43 minutes
