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Sorry, Baby is the debut feature from Eva Victor, who writes, directs, and stars as Agnes, a young, solitary literature professor struggling to move forward after her life was turned upside down three years prior. As the film's official synopsis tells us, "something bad" happened to Agnes (we don't find out exactly what that is until about a third of the way through the film), but this isn't really a movie about the bad thing in question. It's about how life goes on after a bad thing happens, whether you're ready for it or not.
Naomi Ackie puts in a lively supporting turn as Agnes' best friend Lydie, who's known her since graduate school. They met on the same English literature program but, while Agnes stayed put in their New England college town to start teaching after their studies ended, Lydie moved to New York, where she found love, got married, and is now expecting a baby. It's no wonder that Agnes feels like her life is standing still while everyone else's speeds ahead.
Sorry, Baby captures the malaise of your late 20s and early 30s, that feeling of being stuck and moving too fast all at once, without ever resorting to self-indulgence. It's a film about how hard it is to be a person, but how it's always worth persevering, themes that have been explored on screen many times before but have rarely moved me as much as they did here.
Cathartic comedy
The movie's moments of hopefulness are thanks to Lydie, in part, (her and Agnes' friendship feels real and natural, and Victor and Ackie's easy chemistry makes you believe in it wholeheartedly), but also through Agnes' connection with strangers: an unlikely relationship with her neighbor, Gavin, played by Lucas Hedges, and an even unlikelier interaction with a sandwich vendor in a parking lot during a panic attack.
The movie exercises an extremely skilled control of tone: Victor's comedy background (they started their career writing for satirical publication Reductress before making videos for Comedy Central) and sharp insight combined with their honest, moving depiction of trauma means the movie never risks venturing into sentimental territory.
Victor cites Kelly Reichardt's bittersweet gem Certain Women, which stars Kristen Stewart, Lily Gladstone, Michelle Williams, and Laura Dern, as a key inspiration for Sorry, Baby. They also shadowed director Jane Schoenbrun on the set of their critically acclaimed horror movie I Saw the TV Glow, which is gut-wrenching in its portrayal of unwanted self-discovery, to prepare for the making of their own movie. But Sorry, Baby always comes back to life's most farcical, often ridiculous, moments which don't go away even in our darkest times – and that's when the film is often at its funniest.
"To be completely honest, I’ve tried to write really dramatic things, and I don’t always know how to land the plane," the writer-director said in an interview with Roger Ebert. "The most cathartic version of this story for me meant doing the thing I would use to cope with it. So much of performing comedy is about saying things that other people want to say."
Lots of people will find something in Sorry, Baby that resonates with their own life, whether they've experienced the same "bad thing" as Agnes or whether something else traumatic has put a roadblock on the path they thought their life was going down. As Agnes sits alone with Lydie's new baby in the movie's closing scene, though, it feels like new life signals new beginnings: life can start again at any point, you just have to let it happen.
Sorry, Baby is out now in US theaters and arrives in UK cinemas on August 22. For more on what to watch, check out the rest of our Big Screen Spotlight series.
