One of the greatest pasttimes of the previous decade was being able to sit in an indie theater and watching the next generation of filmmakers emerge. While it would be convenient if I could attend Sundance every year and have a better Rolodex of talent to keep an eye on, I often have to read the press, taking suggestions from Letterboxd in hopes of finding somebody who really gets me excited about the future of film. I’m not talking about big-budget blockbuster innovators, but more the small, intimate voices who are really risking something to tell their message. I’d go down the line, but stop at the fact that I was there back when Greta Gerwig was still the new “It Girl” that nobody knew what to do after Greenberg (2010). I’m not expecting everyone I see to hold onto artistic integrity while making Barbie (2023), but would love to have somebody that I latch onto for the next few decades.
For the first time since Celine Song and Past Lives (2023), I have found a filmmaker who has me thrilled at the potential of cinema’s future. To A24’s credit, they have financed a lot of fantastic voices, but few that spark that inspiration inside of me to appreciate every facet of storytelling. It’s there in the way that the story unfolds, mixing a thorny subject matter with an amazing sense of humor. It’s in the performance and the way that it ends not with a conventional sense of catharsis. The personal growth comes from someplace more muted, more insular and real. Even the suggestion of remorse that gives Sorry Baby (2025) its name feels more beautiful than my initial belief of yet another madcap study of trauma.
I’m not sure where Eva Victor’s career will take them, but I am ecstatic to find out. In general, I am attracted to artists who are interested in the mundane, the something universal that connects everybody. For as much as we can get lost in high-concept spectacle, I’m often more drawn to those long conversations while out walking, or the quiet meditative moments that allow for greater interpretation. Maybe it stems from my fondness for early 2010s indie dramedies, but there’s this need to find something genuine, finding a balance between something complex, vulnerable, and real. I’m curious to see characters who are more than the twee moniker that often maligned the form.
This isn’t a story where the score, amazingly done by Lia Ouyang Rusli, is lazily used to inform the emotional cues. The cat that has donned the poster may be cute as a button, but they’re not designed as a manic pixie furball. They’re all crucial to understanding protagonist Agnes (played by Victor), but this is a story that’s honest with her journey. Even so, the naturalism doesn’t resort to predictability or even cruel irony. What’s here is a woman who has had an unfortunate series of events learning to live again, and it results in revelations that feel much more mature than the “spiritual growth by way of foreign escapades” that I’ve grown up being told are the answers.
I suppose some transparency should be shared. I’m a Creative Writing major. I graduated from Cal State Long Beach in 2023 with a bachelor’s degree. The years of opening up these ancient stories and attempting to understand “Beowulf” are well-worn into me. I’ve spent a lot of time around literary-minded types who likely populate Agnes’ world. In fact, it’s made me so biased that in one scene where they’re reading Vladimir Nabokov’s “Lolita,” I found myself angry less at any themes being explored and more the fact that everyone is reading from a different textbook when I was often forced to read certain editions for the sake of pagination. It wasn’t a dealbreaker, but showed that maybe I’m too involved in these causes.
Which is all to say that I relate to Agnes’ broader journey. While I haven’t been to that university nor had a workshop in that environment, I am familiar with those days of gathering your material for presentation, waiting for the class to provide feedback. There is this pressure of having somebody judge your work and have it feel like an attack on your being. Thankfully, Victor paints her with a recognizable kind of anguish that’s far from the hair-pulling clichés that it could’ve gone with. Even the idea of framing her life as some larger narrative doesn’t come with the padded revelations. There are conversations that build their own quirky epiphanies, but they are the type that more come from happenstance than some Rube Golbergian nonsense.
That may be why the moments I found most endearing didn’t seem to have much with her academia. The story opens with her friend Lydie (Naomie Ackie) visiting her somewhat secluded house for a fun weekend. There’s this escape from the outside world that allows for greater personality to come out and allows for these two friends to explore their hopes and dreams. Agnes is going to university and will become a literary teacher.
Her neighbor Gavin (Lucas Hedges) appears randomly as a concerned party. Throughout the story, Hedges gives him this comic outsider nature that never fully understands Agnes, and yet cares for her well-being. In one case, she responds to her traumatic experience by asking him for an irrational series of items. To Victor’s credit, she doesn’t paint Agnes as pathetic for lashing out, but plays it as a comic beat about now having to make use of her newfound goods. In moments like that, the coping mechanisms that come with life after sexual harassment are given an astounding balance of reverence while noticing the way it short-circuits certain practical thinking, at times creating indirect human connection less for reason and more the unexplained insecurity deep inside.
In what may be the film’s strongest element, she takes a break from her personal life to focus on jury duty. The exchange is a familiar, if coded, attempt to reach out to the legal system and believe in the potential for due process. When asked if she can handle a difficult case, she elaborates on how she has a private incident that she can’t share. The shame is evident, but again she becomes more and more suspicious as she tries to hide it. She is incapable of functioning and, as a result, leaves her unable to reach out for significant change. The story suggests that she will move on and, even if there’s a few twists along the way, she will have a normal life where everything will start working out. However, that one moment will cease to feel fully resolved because of its own convoluted skirting.
At the heart of the story, Victor depicts Agnes’ life as a search for order. Like most people, she assumes that it can be found from the institutions designed to protect her. When she picks up a cat, she initially believes that it will provide relief, only to realize that cats have certain instincts that are more of a headache. No matter how she tries to find order, she finds herself discovering how much she needs to rely on herself, building her own security so that she can trust what little outside world will protect her from harm. The starts and stops have enough comic elements, often involving the clueless Gavin, but not without small lessons emerging along the way. This isn’t a downward spiral. If anything, it’s far more optimistic, finding new ways to provide mentorship and keep the cyclical nature of harassment from continuing. This is a love story without any grand gesture. It’s merely an act of sacrifice for the greater good of everyone involved. It’s sometimes unfair, but it’s better than being trapped in what cannot be changed.
On the surface, Sorry Baby is an easy film to dismiss as just another character study with a clever conceit. The small moments are not dissimilar from the indies that feel constructed from small comedy routines. However, Victor has created a film that’s as much invested in these minor achievements as she is in collecting everything into one final cathartic statement. Everything is presented with an intentional sensitivity, at times feeling so real that it has to be autobiographical. For any ties it has to creative writing, “this is the metaphor” technique, it makes up for by presenting something that is unconventional. It’s a story indebted to research, of finding purpose and discovering that the answer is far more abstract than any class will teach you. It’s the type of comfort that only comes from seeing outside oneself long enough to notice that there’s a world beyond your misery. It doesn’t negate what happened, but requires a more complicated sense of empathy.
This is one of my favorite directorial debuts of the decade. It joins a very small class of new filmmakers who make me eager to see where everything is going. As the world falls more into artificiality and treating Tom Cruise as some holier than thou, I look for those who want to say something sincere, who analyze the everyday and challenge what can be said about universal experiences. In the case of Sorry Baby, there’s hope that Victor will continue exploring characters who transcend the farcical nature of dramedies and capture something more recognizable, more human. As things become more confusing, I want innovation to matter not just for escapism, but for expression. Let art be personal again. Invest in smaller projects. After all, life is what’s happening while we’re busy making plans. It’s best to not ignore that fact.
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