How do we continue living when we experience such intense trauma? That’s the main question posed in Eva Victor’s Sorry, Baby (2025) – a female-led story that captures life’s complicated moments in such a serious but unserious way. It leaves you feeling so many different emotions in its nuanced storytelling for understanding life after trauma.
Summary:
Sorry, Baby (2025) follows Agnes on her solo female journey to finding solace and re-discovering her footing in life again after a terrible incident. It’s described as a ‘bittersweet story’ and explores such themes as trauma, friendship, and milestones. Making her directorial debut and starring as its lead, Eva Victor is Agnes – a woman on the brink between being stuck and getting unstuck in life.
Produced by Barry Jenkins – the Academy award-winning screenwriter for his powerful drama, Moonlight (2016), Sorry, Baby (2025) is an up-close portrayal of life after sexual assault. It’s complexed, traumatic, and light-hearted all at the same time. Owing to its black-comedy and drama status, there’s a real purpose here to tell a female-led story of survival. It’s feminist storytelling adds so much to how Agnes’ story is told.
Without the main focus on the two female leads, Agnes and Lydie (Naomi Ackie), the film would be nowhere near as impactful. Eva Victor oozes a hint of Phoebe-Waller Bridge’s female-led storytelling but with an American twist. There’s comedy mixed with very serious moments and an awkward protagonist who is relatable, honest, and raw in her truth… at most times.
Whether she builds the courage to tell her story or not, it’s one that’s an up-and-down journey not a series of moments. Agnes’ narrative could be considered as a late coming-of-age female story as it takes the viewer back to her college days, young adulthood, and how she processes trauma in her world today navigating new steps in her career.
Review:
Sorry, Baby: Thriving Female Friendships
The strong bond between Lydie and Agnes sets off from the very start. They discuss topics that only really close friends would confide in each other. Including whether Agnes often hooks up with her neighbour in perhaps not so subtle language. They’re silly, immature, and friendly. And we’re invested in their friendship from the very beginning.
They clearly match each other’s vibes. And we know from the outset that they’ve been close friends for a while. Luckily, we go right back to the beginning where they first met, and we see truly how much they’ve been through together. But something feels off about Agnes and it sets her journey up here. We can slightly tell that she’s holding something back, but we patiently wait and anticipate finding out.
Flashbacks to Showcase a Journey of Self-healing
Title cards intersect into stages of Agnes’ life up until now as they roll her story into motion. We travel back to her university days where her love for English grows but her worry on life doesn’t settle. Sadly, a shocking midpoint reveals that even someone she confides in can break her apart. Here Eva Victor as the Director is sending a message. One of them being that people in authority positions have too much power. And how one incident can shape and change a life.
Agnes is an English Literature student, and we see references to popular books throughout history with Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita (1955) being the main work. Interestingly Lolita actually bookends (pun intended) the film. Showing at both the start and end of Agnes’ journey to show just how far she has come already and she’s at very different emotional stages in her life. Her classmate and roommate is Lydie and they clearly both have very different ways of working. Whilst Agnes finished essays on the fly, Lydie struggles to write more.
A Traumatic Breakdown Leads to Further Isolation
But Agnes receives special treatment from her English professor, Decker (Louis Cancelmi). And just when Agnes feels like she can truly be herself and thrive at University, she experiences extreme trauma. After being sexually assaulted, we see Agnes retreating further into her shell. Closing herself off from the world and her own life. She’s slowly losing who she is and it’s clear she doesn’t know when or how she’ll ever get ‘her’ back again.
Changes in Agnes’ hairstyle, clothes, and locations serve to highlight her slow demise into a life that she doesn’t realise what she’s living anymore. Post-university, after Lydie leaves and lives her own life, Agnes finds solace in her newly-adopted stray cat. Their presence slightly alleviates her aloneness.
Sorry, Baby: The Need to Be Loved
Agnes finds her one ‘true love’ (definitely at first sight) when she’s casually strolling the street and finds an irresistibly adorable stray cat. Their love for one another is built upon mutual respect. And arguably the funniest scene of the film comes when Agnes attempts to take the cat in a grocery store undetected. Interestingly, the stray cat reflects Agnes and her life as they’re both slowly wondering into the pits of their own turmoil with no plan to what happens next. It’s truly entering ‘stuck to get unstuck’ territory. It also feels like an independent movie from its camera shots, and locations to the strong acting potential on screen. There’s some beautiful naturalistic cinematography too which makes it feel like a real story.
We’re meant to be feeling good about the story from the start with the realistically homely feeling and cozy vibes. As we explore the strong friendship between Agnes and Lydie. The biggest power in the film is how it shifts its tone continuously from win to loss – most likely to mirror life itself. But of course, Agnes witnesses first-hand the stigma around SA victims. From the university’s quick dismissal to the lack of help and support for Agnes to voice her story along the way.
It only comes into fruition in a tense courtroom scene which causes Agnes to re-think her story. But thinking is clearly very different from the actual doing. And for justice to truly be served is another whole issue next to how she looks after her own well-being.
Realism Sets the Story In Motion
There’s a real sense of realism in Sorry, Baby (2025). From the naturalistic acting to the normal everyday locations, natural lighting and a friendship that feels so real and 3D. The two female leads – Eva Victor and Naomi Ackie are both phenomenal in their roles. Their friendship oozes through the screen and it feels intrusive to watch two best friends talk about their life. It often makes you forget you’re watching a movie.
For Agnes’ love interest, Gavin is played by Lucas Hedges who is no stranger to acting in dramas having won the Screen Actors Guild Award and Critics Choice Award for Manchester By the Sea (2016) and Three Billboards Outside Epping, Missouri (2017) respectively. His impressive portfolio boasts other emotional dramas like Greta Gerwig’s Ladybird (2017) and Ben Is Back (2018) alongside acting prowess Julia Roberts.
Lucas Hedges’ portrayal of Gavin gives a much-needed comedic release at times, and he’s just too sweet not to like. His character also serves as a great portrayal of a supportive male counterpart. One who is in the relationship just as much for her as he is for himself. Agnes perhaps finds another mutual love in Gavin as for her stray cat and she’s slowly healing.
Innocence & Positive Change
Interestingly, there’s an imagery of innocence threaded throughout Agnes’ narrative. From life as a hardworking English student who is just getting on with her life when something unexpected upturns it completely. To such innocence in its purest form from a stray kitten to her friend’s newborn baby.
It’s these images that jump into Agnes life with a real hope that it will evoke positive change in her story. With such young and new to life entities opening up different pathways to remind her that life is worth living despite the obstacles. And the story ends on a powerful image to once again reinforce this idea of innocence and experiencing a new lease of life.
Societal Expectations on Women
While we see her best friend, Lydie moving on with life, Agnes stays rather stagnant. As people keep on asking her what her plans are, but she still doesn’t know yet. We’re left asking, ‘does she need to justify her life choices to others?’
It’s the repetitive nature of such questions around marriage and children that women are always asked today. Certain milestones women are supposedly meant to hit by a certain age largely according to societal expectations.
Ultimately, Agnes learns over the course of her self-healing journey that she needs time to recover and that she should only do so for herself. There’s no longer a seek for validation or a need to be loved. Because the person who needed to love her all along was herself.
Sorry, Baby – Final Thoughts:
One thing I noticed is how each stage in Agnes’ life is shaped like chapters in a book. Her journey mirrors that of a protagonist in a novel. It feels quite like the story of Sylvia Plath’s Bell Jar (1963). There’s a major turning point in the middle of Agnes’ journey which overthrows her whole life. It shows just how important each individual moment really is in life. One moment of solitude can easily turn into a moment of sorrow.
Sorry, Baby (2025) expresses so many different emotions throughout the chapters in Agnes’ journey. We’re left feeling everything from hopelessness, fear, loneliness, and abandonment to a real sense of hope and anticipation for what future lies ahead. There’s also a sense of empathy, and optimism for new beginnings. The main message here is definitely hope in discovering a new lease of life and healing through finding yourself again.
Through many tears and spouts of laughter, Sorry, Baby (2025) serves as an emotional drama that leaves you experiencing a whole spectrum of feelings. Whichever feeling you leave with is whether you choose to feel like Agnes has healed or that she’s still there on her journey. Let’s just say she’s still working on it but she’s much better.
Sorry, Baby is an official selection of the Sundance Film Festival 2025. The film is set to be released in UK cinemas on 22nd August 2025. You can read more reviews like Bring Her Back (2025) here.
