Every now and again a performer comes along who manages to distil not just a good performance on screen, but an entire sensibility. So it is with Eva Victor, who wrote, directed and stars in Sorry, Baby<\/b>, a debut feature infused with a distinctive bone-dry mordancy. There\u2019s no mistaking this film for any other, or Victor\u2019s voice \u2014 tart, oblique, sardonic \u2014 for anyone else\u2019s. There\u2019s not a fake note in the movie. <\/p>\n
Sorry, Baby is all about the \u201cbad thing\u201d that happens to a 28-year-old grad student named Agnes (Victor) one summer. That\u2019s what she and her friend Lydie (Naomi Ackie) call it \u2014 \u201cthe thing\u201d, \u201cthe bad thing\u201d, \u201csomething really bad\u201d \u2014 when Lydie returns from the Big City to reunite with her old friend, who is now teaching full-time at the rural college where they were once both students. <\/p>\n
Lydie has a baby on the way, but a sense of stasis hovers over Agnes\u2019s existence, as if she were somehow frozen in time, but such is Agnes\u2019s deadpan humour that it can be a while before you realise it. She has that out-of-body bluntness that accompanies very smart people who are incapable of doing anything except speak their thoughts, however dark, funny or strange. <\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m your real mummy,\u201d she whispers seditiously to her best friend\u2019s baby bump, although the joke only underlines how much Agnes seems to sit on the outside of the usual bourgeois blandishments. Is that because she\u2019s a free thinker, in her tweedy jumpers and combat boots, or is something else holding her apart? <\/p>\n
The film unfolds in chapters shuffled out of sequence \u2014 \u201cThe Year with the Good Sandwich\u201d, \u201cThe Year with the Bad Thing\u201d \u2014 but eventually we see what happened, three years earlier, after Agnes calls at the house of the male teacher assessing her thesis. Agnes disappears behind his front door, but the camera stays on the house, observes as day turns to night. Then a dishevelled Agnes exits, hastily pulling on her boots while he watches, silhouetted in the doorway. The really bad thing just happened. <\/p>\n
The obliquity stuns. Sorry, Baby is all the more devastating in its treatment of sexual assault because it gives the assault itself, and Agnes\u2019s assaulter, such short shrift. From the first frame we are instead focused almost entirely on the quirky, angular, ferociously intelligent woman in front of us \u2014 so the crime, when it happens, seems such a stark violation of these very qualities: an affront to Agnes\u2019s particularity. <\/p>\n
That it happened to this woman seems especially awful, although the thought is a nonsense, of course. Trauma happens to ironic nonconformists too. In fact, the effects of it can be even harder to spot because ironic nonconformists are such dab hands at deflection. <\/p>\n
\u2022 The best films of 2025 so far<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n Much of the humour of Sorry, Baby comes from Agnes\u2019s alienation from the formulaic expressions of sympathy that come her way \u2014 like those from the clueless doctor who tells Agnes she should have gone straight to the hospital after it happened (\u201cI\u2019ll bear that in mind for the next time it happens,\u201d she quips, a joke that comes uncomfortably close to not being a joke at all). <\/p>\n Victor has a great talent for capturing such moments of idiotic lucidity, having come to fame in 2020, after posting a series of short in-character videos \u2014 a girl telling her boyfriend to celebrate Straight Pride, a rich wife who \u201cdefinitely did not murder my husband\u201d \u2014 proving to be a poet of the weird thought, truth blurt and brain fart. <\/p>\n Sorry, Baby is of a different order of achievement. Walking a tonal tightrope between comedy and tragedy with an exquisite balance that recalls Jesse Eisenberg\u2019s A Real Pain of last year, the film manages to address a difficult, dark subject with a blunt candour that is also slyly funny. Victor started writing it during the pandemic, then fast-tracked directorial know-how by shadowing Jane Schoenbrun during the filming of last year\u2019s I Saw the TV Glow, suggesting an exponential level of creative growth that belies the deceptive slightness of Sorry, Baby. We\u2019ll be hearing more from Victor, without a doubt. There\u2019s more reverse-engineered storytelling from Mike Flanagan\u2019s adaptation of Stephen King\u2019s novella The Life of Chuck<\/b>, to more piddling effect. It opens with a teacher, Marty (Chiwetel Ejiofor), trying to go about his usual business, marking papers as news reports come in of the Apocalypse \u2014 wildfires in California, earthquakes in Ohio, volcanoes in Germany \u2014 with everyone on Earth apparently doomed to wandering around, gabbling large amounts of exposition. <\/p>\n Even Marty finds it difficult to ignore the billboard adverts that pop up all over town thanking one \u201cCharles Krantz\u201d for \u201c39 Great Years\u201d. A retirement tribute for some upstate accountant? \u201cThe last meme,\u201d someone calls this mystery man, \u201cthe Oz of the Apocalypse,\u201d as all the hospital\u2019s heart monitors synchronise to record the blips of a single, giant heartbeat. <\/p>\n \u2022 Read more film reviews,<\/b> guides about what to watch and in<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n Those who wish to be surprised by the film\u2019s twist should not be reading reviews, but suffice to say that a big clue lies in the film\u2019s repeated quotation of Walt Whitman\u2019s line \u201cI contain multitudes\u201d. This is King deep in therapeutic-schmaltz mode, with the Apocalypse an excuse to binge on nuggets of folksy wisdom that wouldn\u2019t be out of place in a fortune cookie. <\/p>\n Charles Krantz (Tom Hiddleston), known to his family and friends as Chuck, turns out to be one of those magical strangers, like Forrest Gump or TS Garp, whom the movies are always on at us to find life-affirming but whom in real life you would cross the street to avoid. The highlight is a spontaneous dance that Chuck does to a busker\u2019s beat \u2014 Hiddleston has got some moves \u2014 but the rest of the film is like spooning melted ice cream. No multitudes here, just platitudes. Two-for-one cinema tickets at Everyman<\/p>\n Times+ members can enjoy two-for-one cinema tickets at Everyman each Wednesday. Visit thetimes.com\/timesplus<\/a> to find out more<\/p>\n Which films have you enjoyed at the cinema recently? Let us know in the comments below and follow @timesculture<\/a> to read the latest reviews<\/p>\n
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