‘Sorry, Baby’ review: A thesis on trauma | Sundance 2025

Eva Victor writes, directs, and stars in Sorry, Baby; a somber, witty dramedy that gets some extra credit in healing.

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At first glance, Sorry, Baby might appear to be yet another chin-stroking indie portrait of trauma and self-discovery, the kind of film that invites one to sit solemnly in a dimly lit arthouse cinema, exhaling pensively through one’s nose. But this is a misdirection, a trick of tone, for Eva Victor’s feature debut is far wittier, more idiosyncratic, and more self-aware than all that pablum. This is not a film wallowing in misery, nor does it posture toward profundity. Rather, Sorry, Baby is that rare work of quiet alchemy, its emotional weight carried by Victor’s distinctive comedic voice. One that sidesteps easy sentimentality in favor of blunt, frequently caustic exchanges that somehow manage to feel more true to life than the sweeping melodramas that typically accompany stories of grief and recovery.

Victor, who writes, directs, and stars (one can only assume she also made coffee runs and personally ensured the camera lenses were smudge-free), plays Agnes, a graduate student who eventually becomes a professor. Though the journey between these two states is marked by a quiet devastation. Told in a non-chronological five-part structure, the film is less interested in the traumatic event at its center than in the fragmented, occasionally absurd aftermath, where healing, if it arrives at all, does so in sputtering, incongruous moments. A sandwich shop panic attack, an aggressively mundane faculty meeting, a well-intentioned but ill-equipped neighbor showing up at her house.

It’s a film of clipped conversations and awkward silences. Of banalities standing shoulder to shoulder with existential reckoning. If that sounds emotionally brutal…well, yes, it is. But it’s also funny. Not in a slapstick way, mind you—no pratfalls, no wacky misunderstandings—just the inherent comedy of life continuing on. Oblivious to one’s personal apocalypse.

The film’s top marks go to its dialogue, which is simultaneously heightened and eerily naturalistic. Almost an uncanny blend that makes every exchange feel like it has been plucked from reality but polished to a razor’s edge. The characters talk as if they exist in a world where everyone has read The Feminine Mystique and also has a Bluesky account dedicated to posting brutal comebacks from French theorists. The dialogue is prickly, arch, and often hilarious. The academic town setting has its own strange, detached bubble, where the stakes of intellectual life are both absurdly high and entirely irrelevant in the face of actual, lived experience. It’s a place where Agnes’ trauma receives polite acknowledgement but not much else. People offer support with the stiff awkwardness of a university administrator filling out an HR incident report. No one quite knows how to deal with her, least of all herself.

Thankfully, Agnes has Lydie (Naomi Ackie), a best friend and roommate who is the only character seemingly equipped with both warmth and common sense. Ackie exudes magnetic comfort, her performance infused with the kind of effortless ease that makes one wonder if she simply wandered onto set and started existing in front of the camera. Lydie is Agnes’ tether to reality, the person who tells her, with exasperated clarity, “That is the thing.” And in a film where Agnes feels lost in the fog of her own unprocessed trauma, just a simple act of recognition—the refusal to let Agnes gaslight herself—is radical.

The film is, in many ways, accessing some of the best aspects of female friendship. And the kind of chosen family that makes survival possible. It is also a quietly damning portrait of the people and institutions that should be supportive but instead respond with bureaucratic detachment. The doctors, the HR reps, the people who should be doing more but don’t—all of them rendered, in Victor’s sharp script, as unintentionally comedic figures, fumbling their way through situations that require actual human engagement.

Lucas Hedges, in the role of Agnes’ well-meaning but spectacularly ineffectual neighbor Gavin, brings his trademark mix of awkward sincerity and fumbling charm. At first, he appears to be just another guy Agnes hooks up with out of sheer inertia. Only later do we realize that he is, in fact, the first person she has felt safe enough to be intimate with since the thing that happened. The film is full of these subtle recalibrations, where a seemingly insignificant moment—when revisited—takes on unexpected emotional weight.

As for Victor, her approach to trauma is refreshingly unsentimental. She never asks the audience for pity, nor does she force Agnes into a tidy arc. The nonlinear structure underscores this: Agnes is stuck in place, and the film, wisely, refuses to impose artificial, narrative catharsis. There is no moment where she “overcomes” what happened to her because that is not how trauma works. Instead, she simply continues. Not triumphantly, not brokenly. Just as a person who is still here.

This meandering of the plot might pain some viewers. At times, the film drifts, not aimlessly but languidly, as if mirroring Agnes’ own emotional state a little too well. This is, of course, part of the point. Healing is frustratingly slow. But there are stretches where one wishes the film would tighten its grip, even slightly.

Visually, the film is understated but exacting, with cinematography by Mia Cioffi Henry that captures the isolating stillness of Agnes’ world. There is an attention to small details, such as the way Agnes’ hiking boots sit forgotten in a closet. Or the way a certain noise outside her house lingers just a beat too long, building an invisible architecture of memory and loss. The ghosts of what happened to her are everywhere, but the film never makes them explicit.

Probably the film’s most unique quality is in how it invites the audience into Agnes’ world. Not to fix it, but to sit in it, observe, and listen. The film is, in its own quiet way, a refusal. A refusal to exploit, a refusal to tidy up, a refusal to give its protagonist anything but the space to be. No pass or fail or whatever grade. That may not make for the most conventionally satisfying narrative, but it makes for something far more interesting. No citations needed.

Sorry, Baby had its world premiere at the Sundance 2025 Film Festival. Find more of our Sundance 2025 coverage here.