Sundance 2025 Review: “Sorry, Baby”

February 14, 2025February 14, 2025 Stephanie Young 0 Comments English Movies, Eva Victor, Hollywood, Hollywood Movie Reviews, Sorry Baby, Sundance, Sundance 2025, Sundance Festival, Sundance Film Festival

For the first 22 years of our lives we are told constantly to enjoy our youth and live life to the fullest before the pressures of “real life” gets in the way. This time period stereotypically goes from childhood until one finishes college, university being some of the last times where we are sheltered from the real world. We can party and enjoy late nights with the biggest mountains to climb being finishing an English paper before the deadline on Wednesday. Almost like day and night, the minute graduation comes the world is pushing us to do a 180 and step into a new version of ourselves as a mature and productive adult.

Agnes (Eva Victor) and her best friend Lydie (Naomi Ackie) are thick as thieves, having gone to college together and participated in the same English program. One night, after Agnes experiences a traumatic incident, her world shifts into a space difficult for her happy-go-lucky self to process. In an industry where there is a fine line where comedy and trauma can go hand in hand, Eva Victor has created a film that hits its audience hard while never letting Agnes’s youthfulness falter at the hands of the harsh world.

Victor’s filmmaking style allows for strong character development where still shots and character dialogue is able to fill in the gaps of the traumatic event that Agnes experiences at the hand of her Professor, Decker (Louis Cancelmi). It has always been controversial for this critic to incorporate sexual assault in films, not thematically but visually. There seems to always be this question as to whether a film needs to show visual representations of assault to heighten its emotion or story.

At times, the most impactful ways of incorporating such a topic is through a director’s compassionate eye towards its victim where they can use innovative techniques to send its message to its audience in an artistic manner through the film’s medium. Eva Victor is able to harness the painful and damaging effects of such an event while maintaining the film’s perspective through the eyes of a woman who is not able to fathom something so horrific would happen to a typical girl like her.

🏆 The Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award: U.S. Dramatic goes to Eva Victor (@evavictor) for “Sorry, Baby.” pic.twitter.com/EWp99greBB

— Sundance Film Festival (@sundancefest) January 31, 2025

Sorry, Baby displays Agnes’ character with a childlike naivety to her personality, which is maintained throughout, giving it a sincere and lighter tone that also highlights how she handles obstacles day to day. She has an awkward yet dry silliness to her that isn’t easily buried regardless of what life throws at her. Where so many films that touch on traumatic experiences develop characters whose shine dwindles substantially in the face of darkness, there is a sense of realism to how Agnes, although very much affected by her assault, keeps moving forward. Using light heartedness and her offbeat persona, she continues on her chosen career path. Eva Victor understands that women often must push through walls because we don’t have a choice. It is sink or swim, and even if women are held underwater, the inability to give up our fight to make it to the other side is beyond visible in Agnes’s portrayal. The fight sometimes isn’t triumphant but a steady battle to just keep going forward.

One of the many accomplishments of Sorry, Baby lies in Victor’s ability to present time in a linear and nonlinear fashion where in subsequent years so much changes, though time moves so much slower in our brains. It goes without question that a couple of years is a long time and also not long at all. In this way, Sorry, Baby is told in titled chapters with a specific focus in each one with a reoccurring sensation that looms over its entirety. Although we see Agnes meet a new neighbor, accept a dream job, and even experience jury duty, her encounter with her professor is a shadow she can’t escape from.

However, what Victor shows is that shadows are another side of us but it is constantly dimming and reappearing. It is always there but it also has no physical power over us. It can never hurt us or change us and sometimes with strong friends and community, it becomes less noticeable. Sorry, Baby is a Sundance Film Festival standout and a directorial debut of a strong new voice.

‘Challengers’ Rating – 4.5/5

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Stephanie Young

Senior Associate Writer at Just for Movie Freaks

Stephanie is a huge film fanatic, a librarian, and a baker! And when she isn't busy doing these activities, she is running around with her Australian Cattle Dog!

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