Sorry, Baby is a refreshingly creative and quiet wonder of a film, about a serious subject or three, but handled with a cinematically deft touch. Sexual abuse, thoughts of suicide, and existential drift are interwoven in the tale of a young budding academic, but somehow, auteur and actress Eva Victor manages to spin the narrative with a lightness and dryly witty atmosphere which neither glosses over nor melodramatizes the circumstances before us.
Remarkably, Sorry, Baby is the directorial debut of the triple-promise writer-director-star Victor, best known to date for her role in TV’s Billions, and here showing a deeply layered artistry from the inside out. At times, her ample eccentric charms — as writer and actress — are reminiscent of Miranda July, but with an effect that is warmer to the touch.
Victor’s story is told with subtle and quirky cinematic style, avoiding cliches and dodging our baked-in expectations as moviegoers. Through the saga of her character Agnes, Victor conveys an intimate view of a traumatic experience with an abusive professor — whose evil deed is depicted in a distancing long take outside the house where the abuse occurs — with a twisted and circular sense of time. Aptly, the style alludes to the blurring of memory and time triggered by a traumatic experience.
Victor ingeniously structures her story in a chaptered and chronologically inside-out way, framed by bookends of “The Year of the Baby,” concerning the pending and ultimate arrival of her lesbian friend’s (Naomie Ackie) baby (it turns out, the “baby” of the title, versus any romantic association). The film’s “chapters” proceed in sidewinding ways. In “The Year with the Questions,” she grapples with the residual pain and confusion of life after the abuse and tries to come to terms with surviving its gnawing echoes. “The Year with the Good Sandwich” wrestles some semblance of resolution or acceptance with the help of a happenstance encounter with a common sense–ical wise man/sandwich maker. Why not?
In the margins of this tale of inner conflict and character rebuilding is a comfy amorous interaction — just shy of an actual romantic entanglement — with her neighbor Gavin (Lucas Hedges, always a goofball charmer, as in Manchester by the Sea, Wes Anderson flicks, and Let Them All Talk). Their naturalistic sexual chemistry serves as a balm in a sexually fraught and tarnished world.
In one of the most weirdly poignant scenes of the year in cinema, Agnes has a calmly climactic heart-to-heart talk about life and its inevitable pitfalls with the uncomprehending baby. Hence the movie title. And hence, the makings of a curveball treat of an American indie film, a contender for 10 Best lists come year’s end.
View trailer here.
