By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 3.9 cats | 4.8 cats
Director: Eva Victor
Starring: Eva Victor | John Carroll Lynch | Kelly McCormack | Louis Cancelmi | Lucas Hedges | Naomi Ackie
Year: 2025
Running time: 103
Julie says: “Eva Victor is someone to watch. She’s a chameleon of sorts not recognizable to me as the main character of the movie when she intro’s the movie as I’m sitting in the middle of the Coolidge large theater. It’s not till the q & a that it is confirmed that she is. She looked so familiar while I watched but I couldn’t place her as her character in Billions was so different. It was an impressive directorial debut for her. Great locations chosen and great production design. Deadpan deliver of funny lines in several not funny situations. Very good acting by Eva and the other main characters. I won’t say who, you should just go in blind and be surprised like I was. The movie is like an onion that peels back it’s layers but going back and forth in time non-chronologically until you understand what makes Agnes who she is, and not till the end does the film unlock the mystery of the title. I won’t say more, just to say, see the movie. A fine directorial debut. 4.25 cats”
Chris says: “Movies about trauma are tricky to pull off for obvious reasons: how does one express such discomfort, anger, sadness and fear to an audience without alienating them or coming off as a weight that’s too much to bear? Eva Victor, a 30-year-old actress best known for the TV series BILLIONS takes on this challenge not only as a writer/director in her feature debut but also as its star. She plays Agnes, a college professor in a small Maine town (but mostly filmed near Ipswich, Mass.) recovering from a traumatic event whose details are only gradually disclosed. To make such a scenario digestible, Victor infuses the film with a near-caustic humor, dividing in into sections with whimsical titles, gently satirizing such events as an HR meeting with deadpan punchlines and overall gifting Agnes with a persona that leans towards the comedic self-deprecation of a humorist writer like Curtis Sittenfeld or Jessi Klein.
“As an actor-turned-filmmaker, Victor is not a revelatory talent such as Greta Gerwig or even the Jesse Eisenberg of A REAL PAIN. Her use of humor doesn’t shy away from the pain Agnes experiences but the muted tone with which she often approaches it doesn’t fully register at times. SORRY, BABY works best when she has a simpatico screen partner to play off of, particularly Naomi Ackie who as best friend Lydie brings warmth but also energy whenever she’s onscreen or the great character actor John Carroll Lynch whose one sequence in the film leaves such an impact one can sense the potential of an entire ancillary feature about his character. The missing-in-action-as-of-late Lucas Hedges also has a small role seemingly crafted to display his natural charm as Agnes’ neighbor. As for Victor, this is a good first effort that mostly works but maybe doesn’t fully live up to the buzz it has received so far. 3.5 cats
(IFFBoston 2025 film #8: A24 will release this summer.)”
Aaron replies: “Great review, Chris! That Lynch scene is a standout for sure, I’d love a spinoff focused on his character.”
Diane says: “Wow, even the trailer has such delightfully recognizable locations–my church, a railroad bridge, a local swimming hole… I don’t recall it being filmed here. Thanks for the tipoff, Chris!”
Michael says: “Debut film from writer/director/lead actor, Eva Victor, is a somber, dramaedy, about a young woman struggling with a traumatic past event that she can’t seem to shake, despite her best efforts to put it behind her. Teaching in the small New England University from which she graduated, Agnes lives a fairly solitary life; her best friend and former college roommate has moved to New York City and they see each other sporadically. She is also one of the few people in Agnes’ life who knows what happened.
“Victor tells her story with an unusual cadence, first introducing her main characters in a more light-hearted reunion, so as not to have the past events overshadow their lives, despite the fact that a it does. I actually found the first quarter of the film somewhat off-putting with little to connect to, but once the meat of the story started to kick in, and the narrative began to jump around in time, I fell into Victor’s unusual story-telling rhythms and the film found its pace. The high point for me was a very strong scenes between Agnes and Pete, a grumpy townie with whom she has an initially unsettling encounter. Victor plays Agnes with a quirky sensibility that also came across in the post-film Q&A, so I suspect it’s part of her own personality. It would have been an interesting experience to see her film told with a different actor playing the lead. Lucas Hedges has a lovely supporting role, and John Carroll Lynch nails it as the grumpy Pete. 4 cats
“Screened at the Independent Film Festival Boston, Coolidge Corner Theater”
Adam says: “Script is an absolute marvel, super funny while expertly threading the needle on a tricky tone, and centered around one of my favorite cinematic friendships in forever. It helps that the performances are all fantastic (beyond the great leads, John Carroll Lynch’s scene wrecked me).
“What holds it back a little bit is that Victor is much stronger as a writer and performer than as a director. The whole thing is shot with bland, locked-off scope compositions and banal blocking with very little flair or sense of POV. Feels like a mix of a first-time director and a limited budget, but it starts to undercut the brilliant script after a while. I thought of JANET PLANET, a similar movie I like about the same amount as this one overall, but that one adds so much to its well-written observational vignettes by also having a strong compositional sense and visual identity, which is mostly absent here.
“Still, give Victor’s script and the cast all the awards 🐈⬛. 3 1/2 cats”
Val says: “SORRY BABY embodies a specific filmmaking voice that I feel like we’re seeing more and more, and I’m here for it. Agnes, portrayed by Eva Victor (who also wrote and directed the film), has a brand of humor mixed with something much more grounded and sad that feels so relatable as a similarly-aged woman moving through the world with the trauma that comes from ‘bad things’ happening. The questions it grapples with aren’t new – what do we do when someone does something bad to us? What if we don’t want to ruin their lives, or have our lives ruined as a result of talking about it? Will I ever be ok again?