Sorry, Baby (2025)

Eva Victor wrote the screenplay, directs, and stars in this gentle story of Agnes, a 28-year-old student and professor of literature. IMDb summarizes, “Something bad happened to Agnes. But life goes on—for everyone around her, at least.” Wikipedia calls Sorry, Baby an “independent black comedy-drama,” noting that it debuted at Sundance earlier this year. I don’t know about the comedy part, black or otherwise. The bad thing—I don’t think this is a spoiler, it occurs early in the picture—is that her grad school advisor, Preston Decker (Louis Cancelmi), shows a great deal of interest in her work but later lures her to his home and rapes her. The extremes of violence seem to be limited, but Agnes is sensitive and it’s a deeply troubling, traumatic event. The way she describes it it’s not so much the physical act as her entire loss of confidence in herself that hurts most. Was Decker just praising and flattering her for sex? Sorry, Baby might be a kind of challenge to those with less empathy because it makes it so easy to say or think things like “that wasn’t so bad.” Agnes’s resulting depression and withdrawal from social interactions, however—it’s pretty bad, though doubtless some will call it an overreaction. But Decker does quit his job at the college and move away soon after. It’s possible the assault was worse than we think. Agnes spent hours at his place though she shows little sign of being injured. She tells her best friend Lydie (Naomi Ackie) about it within 24 hours. Lydie takes her to a hospital and helps her report it to the police. But the reaction tends toward indifference and minimizing, especially once authorities learn she bathed soon after. It’s another sad portrait of the way women who report rapes tend to be treated. Ever since the incident Agnes has been reclusive, holing up in her isolated place in the country and mostly keeping to herself. But she does get some good news—she’s been hired for a tenure-track position at the college where she studied, in the New England region where she wants to live, she finds a kitten and adopts it, and she connect with her neighbor Gavin (Lucas Hedges) in an odd but not apparently unhealthy sexual relationship. Agnes, and Sorry, Baby itself, is almost too withdrawn, you almost miss that she is even there, crisis and all. Yet it might be good practice for empathy. I had to keep telling myself to stop minimizing what happened to Agnes and what she is going through. I felt like an unfeeling beast, not taking it seriously enough. It might be good practice for you too—although I can’t be entirely sure that was ever Victor’s intent.