"Sorry, Baby"

   ☆☆☆☆ 

Agnes isn't the most comfortable person to be around. Even when she's trying to get cozy, there's something ever so slightly off about her. So as Sorry, Baby begins, it takes a little while to understand just how profoundly disturbed she is, how difficult life has become for her.

This small, profoundly insightful movie is written and directed by Eva Victor, the woman who plays Agnes. She is a fascinating person to watch. As the movie jumps around in time — a method of storytelling that is as effective as it is sometimes distracting — it is clear that Agnes has never had the same ease in life that comes so naturally to others. She is always just a little nervous, always just a little tentative. She looks like she might break easily.

It turns out Agnes does not break easily at all. What she does is bend — uncomfortably, perhaps unnaturally, and in ways she never expected.

Sorry, Baby is about the way Agnes experiences, survives and then recovers from a sexual assault, but it isn't a Movie of the Week or Afterschool Special sort of story, where lots of people misunderstand what happened or don't believe her or think she must have brought it on herself. It's about the way she comes to terms with what happened, and the way everyone around her, like her close friend Lydie (Naomi Acker) and rural neighbor Gavin (Lucas Hedges) try in their limited but loving ways to help.

This is a slow, quiet movie, filled with uncomfortable silences and scenes that feel disjointed and moments that seem emotionally inappropriate and half-formed, and none of that is meant to imply that Sorry, Baby isn't a tremendously well-made, deeply insightful movie. It's just that for someone like Agnes, life after her experience is slow, filled with uncomfortable silences, and often feels disjointed and half-formed.

This is a rare movie, because it tries to observe a truth — not delve into the mind and heart of a character, but to watch as she struggles with the kind of ordinary tragedy and bland betrayal that exists in too many lives. There are moments when Agnes struggles to recount just what happened, or to clarify for others why it matters to her so much; it's a movie about people who have trouble expressing themselves, so in that way, it's a movie about pretty much every one of us.

There are times when it feels almost too slow, when it seems to meander a little too much, and then Sorry, Baby does something wonderful and completely untelegraphed in its final few scenes. Agnes meets a stranger who seems fundamentally to understand what she cannot make sense of. Their interaction is brief but deeply moving. And then there is one more moment between two important characters.

I'm not going to explain what it is or how it happens, only to say that in the final moments of Sorry, Baby, the title makes perfect and beautiful sense, and suddenly this movie about one very specific person dealing with one very specific moment in her life becomes —spectacularly but quietly — about everyone in the audience who is just trying to find a way forward in a world that doesn't make enough sense. Or, really, maybe, any sense at all.

Viewed July 4, 2025 — AMC Century City

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