Directing: A
Acting: A+
Writing: A
Cinematography: B+
Editing: A-

Rare is the film that is as self-assured as Sorry, Baby, which is written and directed by 31-year-old Eva Victor—who also stars in the lead role, as Agnes. Directing oneself is an impressive challenge in the best of circumstances, and doing it this successfully is practically a miracle. Victor’s performance is simultaneously subtle and astonishing, the kind of thing it’s tempting to say deserves an Oscar, except the Oscars don’t pay much attention to “small movies” like these. And Sorry, Baby has so much integrity, it’s almost condescending even to mention the Oscars, as this isn’t a movie with any aspiration for prizes.

I find myself thinking of the male gaze, because this movie so deftly sidesteps it. This is a film very much about trauma, but it takes a unique approach to it. The separated chapters, each with a title card, aren’t even presented in a fully linear timeline. Once we get to “The Year with the Bad Thing,” the bad thing itself is never shown onscreen. The camera is stationery, across the street, facing the house where it happens. There’s a hard cut to dusk, another hard cut to night. Agnes leaves the front door clearly in a bit of a daze, which continues as the camera follows her to her car, and along her drive home. We only learn exactly what happened when we hear Agnes recount it to her very close, lesbian friend Lydie (Naomi Ackie).

One of the many things I love about Sorry, Baby is how much humor is in it, and nearly all of the humor occurs after we learn of this assault. There’s humor in the doctor’s office the very next morning, when Agnes is getting “standard questions” from a clueless doctor, with Lydia by her side. There’s humor in Agnes’s meeting of a random sandwich shop owner who calms her down when she drives off the road by his shop due to a panic attack. There’s humor in Agnes’s awkward dinner with university colleagues which includes a deeply jealous woman (Kelly McCormack) who believes she should have gotten the full-time position Agnes was offered. And there’s some subtle humor in Agnes’s cautious development of a relationship with her neighbor, Gavin. Lucas Hedges is perfectly cast as Gavin, having returned to film last year after a break to focus on writing. He’s been missed, and as always he works incredibly well as a character actor in supporting parts.

And Gavin, incidentally, is the closest we get to a male point of view in Sorry, Baby. And to say it’s told from a female point of view is itself a bit complicated: Eva Victor reportedly uses both they/them and she/her pronouns. Agnes, the character, never states any preferred pronouns, except for a scene in which an arrow is pointed to the space between M an F under “gender” in a jury duty questionnaire. Lydie, on the other hand, is depicted both post- and pre-coming out in subtle ways, consistently refers to herself as gay, but is in a relationship with a nonbinary person named Fran (E.R. Fightmaster, who is themself nonbinary). These variances in gender are never the focus of the story or any particular character, which is what’s so great about it: they just are, and art getting made by younger filmmakers will inevitably do this more often, thereby slowly but surely conditioning audiences to the idea, whether some dipshit Alabama governor likes it or not.

With all that in mind, it’s somewhat amusing to think of how Eva Victor is referred to when referred to only by last name. Sorry, Baby clearly has more than just these things on its mind—and even has the way people are treated based on perceived gender on its mind. There’s a scene in which two women on the faculty basically feign concern for Agnes when one of them says, “We know what you’re going through. We’re women.” Except it sounds like a memorized script, and that’s the point. It plays funny, but with a deep subtext of sadness. People who have never experienced sexual assault might feel like such odd, awkward or wildly tone deaf reactions to it are unrealistic. People who know the experience are fully aware of how often this sort of stuff happens—both being victimized and being completely misunderstood about it.

It would seem at first glance that Sorry, Baby is a movie about the friendship between Agnes and Lydie, but it’s actually far more specifically about Agnes, and how they come to terms with this trauma. Lydie, while clearly a very good friend, is just one of the narrative threads. Still, once the story gets to Lydie and Fran having a baby, we get to how that baby is, in her way, the title character. This is only revealed in the final scene, when Agnes is looking after the baby while Lydie and Fran are on a walk, and Agnes assures the baby that she can tell her anything no matter how scary—and scary things will happen. Life will have its challenges, but we’ll help each other get through it. And I feel lucky to have Victor take me through Sorry Baby, a film that turns deeply complicated issues and themes into a gem of poignant simplicity.

*This might be the smartest movie you’e seen about such heavy subject matter.*

Overall: A