How 'Sorry, Baby' Rethinks Time and Trauma: A Closer Look at Eva Victor’s Debut
By Natalie McCarty
“It’s a lot to be anywhere.”
Image Courtesy of A24
The opening of Sorry, Baby doesn’t feel like the start of a film so much as the intimate act of stepping into someone’s life. Agnes (Eva Victor) and Lydie (Naomi Ackie) share a connection so effortless and lived-in that you’re immediately drawn into their world. Their friendship is tender in a way only the rarest, most deeply known friendships can be: loose, fast, affectionate, and full of the kind of shorthand that only best friends speak fluently. The film begins with this warmth that is so soft but intense enough to pull you fully into the narrative.
Within minutes, I found a profound recognition and reflection of self in these characters. I’ve known them. I’ve been them. I am them, as Agnes, especially, mirrored so much of my humor, self-carrying, and (affectionate) weirdness. And Lydie with her wit, and her presence, and those knowing glances, well, she might as well be my best friend (hello, Monet). Their friendship is rendered from the inside out, lived and breathed rather than sketched for narrative convenience. That immediate investment in their bond pulls you beyond mere observation and, instead, allows you to inhabit it. You participate in the conversation, feeling its nuance in your own eyes, your own body, your own mind. Though this film can take you back to a place you’d rather not revisit, it opens a dialogue in a way no other film has before.
The timeline of Sorry, Baby is nonlinear—brilliantly so—because trauma itself rarely unfolds in chronological order. Distance allows memory to reshape itself, enabling clarity, freer speech, and recognition of how one alters to survive post-event. Victor’s structure mirrors this: emotionally precise, fractured like memory. We’re dropped into conversations, interrupted by flashbacks that aren’t flagged as such. And because we are already rooted in the emotional terrain, the disorientation of time works. It mimics trauma’s cyclical and unresolved nature.
Written, directed by, and starring the genius Eva Victor, Sorry, Baby traces not the rupture itself, but its aftermath. The assault is never shown. Instead, the camera lingers outside the house as light fades and the air thickens. When Agnes finally emerges, the stillness remains. Life has fractured, but the world does not pause. It goes on, and it carries you with it. Yet some part of Agnes stays behind—separated from her body in that house at dusk, frozen and unable to catch up. She moves forward, but not all of her moves are with the world.
Yet Sorry, Baby doesn’t revolve around the trauma itself. It lives in the spaces surrounding it. Agnes doesn’t fall apart theatrically. She lives in the aftermath, navigates her teaching job, feeds her cat, and says the wrong thing at dinners. Her grief is granular, intimate, and ordinary. Because Victor lets us see Agnes’s world before the assault, the weight of her silence feels palpable without needing to be spelled out. The story unfolds much like a friend might tell you one, not linearly, not all at once, but because she trusts you enough to begin.
I’ve rarely felt this kind of closeness in a film. It’s not just identification but a deep emotional attachment. I cared for Agnes the way you care for someone you know intimately. Because of that care, I didn’t need her to “heal.” I just wanted to listen, support her, and make her feel seen. Some wounds never fully heal, and no amount of time changes that perspective. A crime is committed against your body, and you have to learn how to keep living inside it.
The bond with Lydie sustains that possibility. Naomi Ackie’s performance is nothing short of (for lack of a better word) extraordinary. She’s fierce, funny, and loyal. The constancy of their friendship in its small details and its authentic tenderness is what allows the film to be bearable. It is the central love story. Without it, the film would be something else entirely.
Later, Agnes meets Gavin, played by Lucas Hedges. Their dynamic is gentle, slow, and incredibly specific. Gavin creates space, not for disclosure, but for quiet, and, most importantly, for the opportunity to build trust with someone again. The way Agnes relaxes in his presence reflects something unspoken in the healing process: how even feeling safe with someone again, especially a man, can feel like a betrayal of the body’s memory. Victor acknowledges this tension without dramatizing it. It’s simply there in its subtleness and impossibility to ignore. That acknowledgment alone feels radical.
Image Courtesy of A24
Mia Cioffi Henry’s cinematography is meticulous and observant, capturing everything from sunlight bending through curtained windows to doorways that feel too narrow, and rooms filled with more silence than dialogue. The score is exceptional, breathing a subtle yet vital pulse into the film.
At the post-screening Q&A, Victor spoke about the choice to show and not tell. That ethos runs through every frame. Rather than narrating grief, they build a world in which it exists, and then they invite us in.
Near the end, there’s a moment when Agnes, holding Lydie’s newborn, offers an apology. It’s raw and unexpectedly tender—a small gesture toward softness that shifts everything. For a film so attuned to the realities of carrying trauma, this quiet monologue feels perfectly placed as the conclusion.
Image Courtesy of A24
Sorry, Baby is not a film about what happens; it is a film about what remains. In that, it achieves something rare: a portrayal of survival that is neither inspirational nor devastating, but deeply, stubbornly human.
