Sorry, Baby Film Review: How Do We Heal?

In Sorry, Baby, Eva Victor crafts a story about trauma that prioritizes depicting nonlinear healing and friendship between women over violence and suffering.

Content Warning: Discussions of sexual assault

Sorry, Baby premiered at Sundance to rave reviews, and is fresh off a run at Cannes, where it was screened as the closing film of the Directors’ Fortnight. The story follows Agnes (Victor), a young college professor who teaches English Literature at her alma mater and lives in the house she once shared with her best friend from grad school, Lydie (Naomi Ackie, of Mickey 17). From the beginning, when Lydie comes back to town for the weekend, we get the sense that Agnes is stuck on something in the past. We soon learn more about her origins, as the story is told in a nonlinear fashion, and after Lydie’s visit, it flashes back to the pair’s last year of grad school. 

The university atmosphere is immersive, and beautifully captured by director of photography Mia Cioffi Henry. Watching, you can almost feel the stiff wooden chairs in the seminar classroom, the barely concealed yearning for academic validation from peers and mentors, and the bite of the perpetually overcast Massachusetts winter. The movie perfectly encapsulates that period in a person’s life, a time of firsts and frustrations, new adulthood and uncertainty. It’s during this time that Agnes experiences something shocking and traumatic that sends her life careening in a new direction. 

What happened to Agnes? And as a director, how do you depict it? Plenty have decided the answer is explicitly staged violence that is agonizing to watch and taxing or even unsafe to film. But the new gen of feminist filmmakers, approaching the topic with empathy and an expressly political perspective, often chooses to subvert this. The way it’s staged in Sorry, Baby, it is Agnes who holds the information and controls the audience’s attention. We do not see the violence inflicted upon her, and there is no opportunity for voyeuristic fetishization of female pain.  

This is a story about pain, but it cares about healing and living above all else. Victor has no interest in romanticizing brokenness, or allowing the idea that trauma becomes someone’s whole life. What moments of suffering we do see are filmed with empathy, and designed to fit into Agnes’ journey as a whole person, working her way through her grief. One night, feeling exposed with no curtains on her windows, she tapes pages of her thesis over the glass. She leaves them up for months, where they slowly wither and fade in the sun. In this simple shot, we see Agnes’ anxiety and also problem-solving, the love of writing that was robbed from her and then reclaimed, her reexamining of the past. 

Sorry, Baby is filled with these subtle moments, and many different characters, even if they only have a few minutes of screentime, are written by the same loving hand. But the movie’s biggest constant is Agnes’ friendship with Lydie. It’s natural, life-affirming, and will feel familiar and real to viewers lucky enough to have such a friendship in their lives. The way they talk (overlapping, in shorthand), the way they sleep (on the couch, tangled in the same blanket), the way Agnes greets Lydie at the door—there are multiple romances in the film, but its beating heart is the love affair between two best friends. Victor’s sharp script and chemistry with Ackie make the relationship sing, a touching throughline no matter how hard things get. 

The story of friends who are there to pick each other up even from rock bottom is powerful enough to sustain an entire movie, but there’s social critique at play here too. Sorry, Baby doesn’t need to reach far to skewer the institutions that so often fail those in need, of course, but Victor uses their comedy writing chops to seize the opportunity. Agnes’ journey leads her into encounters with doctors, university bureaucrats, and toxic old friends, all of whom she confronts with honesty and incongruous humor that may make audiences laugh out loud, cheer, and squirm in equal measure. It’s immensely satisfying to watch these characters reject the tired narratives around abuse that we’ve seen play out on screen and in life for far too long. 

Those darkly comedic yet retraumatizing events are interspersed with moments of genuine happiness and reclamation. As time passes, Agnes rediscovers her passion for teaching and finds new moments of connection in unlikely places. Eventually, we get to see the life Lydie has carved out for herself, and Agnes’ joy at the ways they’ve grown together. Still, the story never simplifies her healing process, or makes that process seem as if it can be a clear trip from one point to another. In a world that often diminishes survivors to their suffering, it feels important to watch media where all characters are allowed to be human and imperfect on their paths forward.

The film offers no definitive conclusions; it knows that would be inauthentic. Healing is a process, and life is long. Sorry, Baby excels by embracing life’s nuances and idiosyncrasies, finding laughter in horror and romance in borrowing your new neighbor’s lighter fluid in the middle of the night so you can burn down your abuser’s house. Trust me, it makes sense in context, and Agnes’ awkward, adorable meet-cute with said neighbor (Lucas Hedges, of Manchester by the Sea) stands out in a script full of well-written relationships. A story about survival, friendship, culture, and strength, Sorry, Baby is a must-watch.

Sorry, Baby was screened at the Cannes Film Festival on May 22, 2025, after its World Premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in January. The film will be released in select US theatres on June 27, 2025, nationwide on July 18, 2025, and in UK cinemas on August 22, 2025.