In “Sorry, Baby,” the defining moment of Agnes’ adult life happens off-camera, but it haunts nearly every other scene in the movie. A standout of the U.S.
dramatic competition at Sundance, Eva Victor ’s disarming funny, slow-to-unfold debut is less a film about sexual assault than it is a serious look at the process of rebuilding after such an experience. Sympathy merges with satire, and acceptance leads to questions (rather than the other way around), as Victor herself embodies a bright young woman who probably thought of herself as a dozen things — witty, independent, a sure-to-inspire future professor — but now must add “survivor” to that list. A tall, willowy 20-something, Agnes is a brilliant literary mind who must rewrite everything, including her understanding of the word “brilliant,” after the professor (Louis Cancelmi) who’d freely offered such compliments makes a pass at her.
“Do you think that’s why he’s telling me that I’m smart?” Agnes asks her lesbian roommate Lydie (Naomi Ackie), who impishly tells her to go for it. Agnes wouldn’t be the first to sleep with her thesis adviser, but she’s looking for a different kind of validation, and when he crosses the line, it shatters her trust in pretty much everything — to the extent that she’s apologizing to newborns for life’s inevitable disappointments by the film’s end. Early on, before Victor has even established the #MeToo dimension of the film, there’s a sense that she c.
