SORRY, BABY

THREE STARS Following an incident, Agnes is struggling to let go and reconnect with her life.

DRAMA USA English #SORRYBABY Starring Eva Victor, Naomi Ackie

At their best, movies can give voice to feelings we can’t quite put into words. That’s the territory writer/director Eva Victor aims for in her debut SORRY, BABY - a tender, messy and droll exploration of personal trauma.

Victor also takes acting duty as Agnes, a late-twenties academic who’s stayed put in the sleepy college town where she earned her degree. She’s landed a secure teaching job and life seems settled, if small. Then her best friend Lydie (the excellent Naomi Ackie) breezes in from New York with big news: she’s married and pregnant. Agnes is happy for her, mostly. But there’s a pang of abandonment too. While Lydie is moving forward Agnes, for reasons she’s kept private, is not.

As we learn, Agnes and been sexually assaulted in her final year. SORRY, BABY skips between past and present, piecing together the lead-up to this moment and the slow aftermath. For Agnes the incident remains painful not only because of the violation, but because she trusted her attacker. With that, she’s been unable to find a way to fully heal.

Victor’s film lives in that grey space where victims don’t behave the right way. Agnes doesn’t press charges, she simply wants ‘him to stop being someone who does that,” she says. Retribution isn’t the goal; she just wishes none of it had happened.  But it did and that isn’t going to change. Some may bristle at her choices, but when we see her dealings with two supposedly supportive campus reps, and more alarmingly a doctor, it’s hard to blame her.

Surprisingly, given the subject matter and its low key treatment, there’s a lot of humour in Victor’s script. A cat drops an almost-dead mouse at Agnes’ feet. What now? There’s no good answer, but Victor mines this, among many other absurdities. Ackie is excellent as Lydie, all warm intuition and quiet observation as is Lucas Hedges as Gavin, a shy neighbour and friends-with-benefits arrangement that Agnes keeps deliberately unromantic. He’s Panadol for her pain.

Yet for all the good material at the edges (an encounter with the owner of a sandwich bar following a panic attack is especially poignant), the core of the film - Agnes - is frustratingly inscrutable. In a film so invested in the messiness of feeling, it’s odd we’re not entirely sure what she really feels. That distance dulls the very connection the film is reaching for, leaving SORRY, BABY as something to admire more than inhabit. It’s sincere, smart and at times quietly moving but like its central character, it keeps us at arm’s length.

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