Rob Reviews "Sorry, Baby"

To prepare for her big screen directorial debut in Sorry, Baby, Eva Victor spent time with Jane Schoenbrun during the filming of I Saw the TV Glow, which is not a bad way to do it.  Even though this film is VERY different from the latter of the two, it seems to have paid off for her.

Victor plays Agnes, who lives a life in seclusion in New England as a full-time English professor at a local university.  Her best friend, Lydie (Naomi Ackie), comes to visit her from New York, and their weekend together sparks the flashback that changed Agnes’ life forever.  On her journey of discovery and loss, she tries to re-discover who she is in spite of the things that she has been through while the world around her seems to move on.

The first segment of this film does seem to drag a bit but hang in there.  It simply sets up ALL of the dynamics that are to come.  Even a couple of the minor characters introduced affect the way things unfold to a certain degree.  I can’t go too much deeper into the plot as even the IMDb description of Sorry, Baby is INCREDIBLY vague.  The one thing I can say is that there needs to be a trigger warning here as it deals with some very sensitive subject manner, but it also does so in a way that is both honest and grounded.

Outside of the tremendous job that both Victor and Ackie do in their performances, there is also great work done by Lucas Hedges as Gavin, Agnes’ neighbor who mainly exists in the third act as Agnes truly begins to deal with the issues that get her to where she is.  Make no mistake: this IS Agnes’ story, but the characters around her are blended in to just the right amount so as not to have any of the most important parts of her character arc get lost in any other details.  There was one that I think could have been used a bit more, but I am also not sure that if my theory on it was correct that it would have added anything that would not have gotten the main story off of its path.

Victor also directs like a true pro here, and not just as a first-time director that also has a four-episode TV series to her name.  She knows exactly how to convey each and every emotion that Agnes has within the frame in a way that hit me like a freight train at times and ran the gambit of emotions through just over an hour and forty-five minutes of run time.  The story is rich and engaging, and some of the more uncomfortable moments are handled with such care that it made me feel for Agnes that much more.

Sorry, Baby is the kind of film that has the ability to help others that go through the same types of things that Agnes’ does through their own journey, and I truly hope that is the case.  Without trying to oversell it, this is an important film that needs to be seen by as many people as possible.