Sundance review: 'Sorry, Baby' is an empathetic look at a woman trying to get unstuck after tragedy, and a triumph for director/writer/star Eva Victor

Alternately sad, scary and awkwardly funny, writer-director-star Eva Victor’s debut feature, “Sorry, Baby,” is a sneakily moving story of a woman stuck in place and trying to move — move on, move forward, move somewhere — after a bad thing happens to her.

Victor is very clear what the bad thing is, though she does not dramatize the bad thing. Victor tells her story in chapters, and the second chapter is called “The Year with the Bad Thing,” and she doesn’t leave any doubt what the bad thing is.

In the first chapter, called “The Year with the Baby,” we meet Victor’s character, Agnes, a literature professor at a small New England college. Her best friend, Lydie (Naomi Ackie), has driven up from New York for a visit — staying at Agnes’ house, which is the same house they shared when they both attended this college. Agnes is the youngest full-time professor the college’s English department has ever had, a fact often cited by Natasha (Kelly McCormack), an adjunct professor and former classmate who jealously comments that everything has come easy to Agnes.

Lydie also meets Agnes’ neighbor, Gavin (Lucas Hedges), a handsome and slightly perplexed man — and, Lydie suspects, someone with whom Agnes has had sex. Since Lydie knows about the bad thing that happened to Agnes four years earlier, the possibility that Agnes has an occasional friend with benefits down the road is a positive.

Then comes that second chapter, “The Year with the Bad Thing,” set when Agnes and Lydie are grad students, finishing their respective literary theses to turn in to their professor, Preston Decker (Louis Cancelmi). Natasha’s in the class, too, and annoys Agnes by suggesting that Agnes is the professor’s favorite. Then there’s the Bad Thing. 

The rest of Victor’s sharply observant and warmly empathetic movie focuses on the ways Agnes is trying to exist in the wake of the Bad Thing. She tries to write. She carries on at school. She considers doing some damage, either to herself or to something else. She finds a stray kitten in the street and tells Lydie that they’re keeping it.

Every second Victor lets us spend with Agnes is perfect. Victor finds quiet, precise moments that show us Agnes’ bruised psyche, with hints of humor that show us her resilience to avoid falling into an abyss of her darker thoughts. Victor doesn’t underline her points, and doesn’t have to — she understands Agnes intuitively, and projects that feeling to the audience so we understand her without having to have her emotions broadcast to us.

As an actor, Victor balances Agnes’ hesitant humor with a deep reservoir of pain, finding a middle space where she’s working through her life to find a way to get out of her rut. Victor may be the most empathetic filmmaker to come through the Sundance Film Festival since Miranda July, and she shows in “Sorry, Baby” that she’s got a lot to show the world.

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‘Sorry, Baby’

★★★★

Screening in the U.S. Dramatic competition of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Screens again: Thursday, January 30, 9 p.m., The Ray, Park City; Friday, January 31, 2:30 p.m., Library; Park City; Saturday, February 1, 11:30 a.m., Rose Wagner, Salt Lake City. Online screenings Thursday, January 30, 8 a.m. to Sunday, February 2, 11:55 p.m. (All times Mountain time zone.) Not rated, but probably R for sexuality, descriptions of sexual violence, and language. Running time: 102 minutes.