At one point in \u201cSorry, Baby,\u201d a new film written, directed, and starring the actor and comedian Eva Victor, the main character, an English professor named Agnes, has an anxiety attack while driving. She pulls over into the parking lot of a roadside sandwich shop and comes upon the shop\u2019s proprietor, a warm and gruffly paternal older man. \u201cSomething pretty bad\u201d happened to her three years ago, she tells him. Although she doesn\u2019t elaborate, the viewer knows that a trusted professor raped her when she was still in graduate school. She has since finished her program, and her best friend and primary emotional support, Lydie, has moved to New York, prompting Agnes to fear that she herself is frozen in place. When she encounters the kindly shop owner, it\u2019s as if he has been conjured by the precise shape of her need. He responds to Agnes\u2019s confession by putting together a sandwich, which she eats as she recomposes herself. Three years is \u201cnot that much time,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s a lot of time but it\u2019s not that much time.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe whole thesis of the film\u201d is in that line, Victor told me when we met in Los Angeles this spring. \u201cSorry, Baby\u201d proposes a set of ideas about the mutability of trauma: that recovery is nonlinear, that the self is fluid, that time modulates the meaning of events, that life unfolds in a mix of genres. The shop owner\u2019s words encapsulate a belief that strangers can \u201csee you in a way that other people can\u2019t,\u201d Victor said. He\u2019s one of several indications that \u201cSorry Baby\u201d takes place in a world that might be slightly magical, or at least softly impressionable to Agnes\u2019s inner life.<\/p>\n
As an homage to the sandwich scene, Victor and I were at a sandwich shop in the Silver Lake neighborhood. She was there when I arrived, standing to the side of the glass storefront. The caf\u00e9 had an Instagram-ready vibe\u2014mosaic tiles, olde-shoppe-style fonts, accents of bubblegum pink and robin\u2019s-egg blue\u2014but Victor was dressed as if to avoid notice, in black pants and a black sweatshirt. Her hair was drawn back in a messy bun. Waiting for our table, we sat and chatted on two of the child-size fluorescent stools outside. Time passed, and it became harder to ignore that the restaurant appeared to have forgotten about us. Presently, swapping her reticence for a politely commanding air, Victor unfolded herself from the tiny stool and approached the hostess stand. There followed a small commotion of friendliness\u2014apologies, laughter\u2014after which we were led to our seats and sent a free passion-fruit donut.<\/p>\n
\u201cSorry, Baby,\u201d which came out in wide release on June 27th, is stamped by Victor\u2019s versatility. She started writing the intimate and meticulous film in earnest during the pandemic, when COVID halted the production schedule for \u201cBillions,\u201d the show on which she\u2019d been playing a \u201cgenius quant\u201d named Rian. Victor had been craving \u201cprivate writing time and some reflection,\u201d she said. She sublet her cousin\u2019s house in rural Maine and began a contemplative, almost monastic interlude: lots of walking in the snow and the cold, lots of driving. She watched many movies and warmed many cans of split-pea soup.<\/p>\n
When the writing was done, in 2021, Victor sent her script to Pastel, a production company headed by the director Barry Jenkins, who had cold-D.M.\u2019d her a few months earlier, soliciting work. Victor knew she wanted to act in the feature; Jenkins suggested that she direct it, too. Pastel set up a two-day practice shoot to get Victor more comfortable behind the camera. She also shadowed her friend Jane Schoenbrun during the making of Schoenbrun\u2019s movie \u201cI Saw the TV Glow.\u201d By 2024, Victor felt ready to film. She was moved by the number of people\u2014strangers, initially\u2014who supported her vision. \u201cWhen you\u2019re writing about someone feeling so isolated and so lonely, when the making of it becomes collaborative, that\u2019s a special thing,\u201d she told me. \u201cTo feel so seen and so heard\u201d was a \u201cprofound transformation.\u201d<\/p>\n
The film is animated by a remarkable tenderness toward Agnes and toward survivors of sexual violence in general. With one exception, characters avoid clinical or precise description of the incident, speaking instead of \u201cthe thing,\u201d \u201cthe bad thing,\u201d \u201csomething really bad.\u201d Victor glossed these euphemisms as protective. \u201cSorry, Baby\u201d \u201ctries to take care of someone watching and to have a good bedside manner,\u201d she said. But the movie\u2019s linguistic delicacy also evinces intimacy with trauma\u2019s subtler effects\u2014its inexpressibility, its senselessness. Attempting to narrate her rape to Lydie, Agnes isn\u2019t sure which details to prioritize, or what order to put them in, and her disjointed account captures her internal confusion. \u201cI just got up,\u201d she says at one point, \u201cand I grabbed my boots, and I drove home, and now I\u2019m here.\u201d<\/p>\n
In \u201cSorry, Baby,\u201d Agnes has a vexed relationship with time, and Victor wanted to manipulate its flow to serve the character. The movie presents the years of Agnes\u2019s life out of order, a choice that invites us into her experience of surreal circling rather than forward movement. Victor hoped that the structure of the film, which begins in the present and doubles back, would allow viewers to form an impression of Agnes independent of the assault: \u201cI wanted to give her a fighting chance at being complicated and interesting.\u201d The first part of the movie \u201cis all about these two people\u201d\u2014Agnes and Lydie\u2014\u201cand their love for each other and their joy in their friendship.\u201d Early scenes are defined by the easy charisma of the performers and organized around the news that Lydie is pregnant. As the film proceeds, we encounter details (Victor referred to them as \u201clittle ghosts\u201d) that seem ordinary or neutral. In one scene, Agnes is wearing a pair of chunky combat boots, and old, worn pages of her thesis are taped to her window. Later, we learn that she was wearing the same boots when she was raped; she covered her window afterward so that no one could look inside.<\/p>\n
Narratives of female pain often traffic in the mystique of the wounded woman: we see characters from without and are seduced by their reticence, their secrets. But Victor is interested, nearly exclusively, in what such damage feels like internally. There\u2019s something quietly radical about the way \u201cSorry, Baby\u201d privileges Agnes\u2019s subjectivity while also exploring her trauma. A detail like the pair of combat boots only becomes unsettling as we move deeper into Agnes\u2019s perspective. Consequently, we neither leer at Agnes nor romanticize her; we aren\u2019t waiting for a horrific revelation to resolve her enigmas and snap her into place.<\/p>\n