Sorry, Baby

Watched at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival.

Gosh, where can I begin? This movie is both hilarious and heartbreaking as it perfectly portrays of both the drama and comedic moments of life despite the harrowing situation that has been encountered. Eva Victor, who directed and acted, crafts an incredible drama that becomes a good character study of finding ways to move on with great dialogue, character dynamics, performances, and direction on the tone and atmosphere throughout.

Presented with good realistic camerawork, structure, and editing, the movie handles it serious themes solely and perfectly. Including great characters, atmospheres and cunning dialogue that are presented throughout the story that achieves the realism and nature approaches or life. There are some dialogue moments that are still burned into my memory which shows how good the dialogue is. Each conversation, choices and structure is held perfectly from Victor with each pacing moment feeling balanced, tone being focused and a good sense of humane style of life. No moment there was something that felt out of place, cheesy or unrealistic.

Eva Victor might be a new voice in cinema pretty soon and I do hope Victor is able to get the chance to shine soon.

Sorry, Baby is one of the most nuanced, simple yet complex telling of the effects and aftermath of a traumatic event in the life of a bright, energetic and youthful woman. Beautifully written, directed and brought to screen with a very balanced, sensitive and realistic performance by debutant Eva Victor. The movie is truly deserving of its premiere and writing award at Sundance and being the closing movie of the director's fortnight at Cannes.

Eva Victor tells her story in a non chronological manner by moving forward and backward in time through five specific chapters representing five very different years of her life. This non linear approach highlights her emotional journey and augments the story telling significantly. The story is simple and the pace of the movie is slow but it is this slow pace and focus on the lead characters subdued emotions when alone mixed with phases of elation when in the company of her best friend that makes the movie so effective.

Eva does a brilliant job channeling the emotions of disappointment, disillusionment, isolation, grief, anxiety and anger mixed with those of hope, resilience and healing. At no point it appears that she is acting and that is what makes her performance and the movie special. Don't expect any cinematic fireworks as Eva makes the audience truly experience the lead character's emotional journey through trauma. Delicate, authentic and realistic. 8/10.

I really wanted to like this movie. However it felt like a movie that existed only because of the harshness of the subject matter, that of which is not explored very much in the film. There is not really any tension in the film, nor any real sense of storyline. It is basically just a slice of life tale but actually several slices that aren't that intertwined, and most of the plot points felt completely unimportant. You could edit this film down to 30 minutes or less, and it would probably be a lot better. I also felt like the movie could've leaned into Eva's quirkiness more, there were a few funny moments but not nearly enough. Some decent cinematography though and Naomi Ackie is always great. (6.2/10)

Without spoiling any specific details from the movie, the plot centers around a quiet student turned teacher who tries to overcome a horrific act committed against her.

It isn't a bad film. It's made well, cheap (which is nice to see for a change), and has some good actors, but the issue is that the movie adds nothing that hasn't been said a many times before. There are far better movies and shows about the exact same subject matter from a female's perspective like The Piano Teacher, Unbelievable, Girl Interrupted, Room, Precious, A Promising Young Woman, etc.

The issue with Sorry, Baby is it adds nothing and says very little of what hasn't already been said before. The only difference is this movie is a little more quirky with the humor and is very small scale, which is nice. But the writer throws it all away with a meandering, nonsensical ending that goes nowhere and abruptly ends with no resolution of any kind. I get wanting to keep the discussion open ended, but this felt lazy and uninspired.

Know a lot of people who love this film and maybe I'm the odd one out, but this movie felt incomplete to me. Will be interesting to see what the writer/director/producer/star does next.

If you have a friend that enjoys complaining about the same thing over and over, for months and years, and you enjoy nodding to whatever nonsense she says, this film is for you.

No spoilers that aren't in the trailer.

It has some good traits: it's not boring and goes by quickly, the main actor is very beautiful and plays well too, the camerawork is very enjoyable.

As some people have pointed out, there are a lot of strange things about the film. To me it looks like it could be taking place in the 80s, it is so quiet and muted, so devoid of technology except for an appearance of a phone/laptop every now and then. A deserted village with barely any people, the main character lives in the woods. The uni is tiny at least in comparison to what I know, of course she is a professor if there are 15 people living in that area. Except for the few main characters no one has a personality, and they are only there to "attack her" by actually doing their job and filling a medical form/interviewing her for the jury service/telling her not to park there/telling her that they can't fire a guy who has already quit. I hated how they treated the doctor, I really did. And I also really disliked how their way of giving a black one some personality was just to have her swear a lot and talk about male organs all the time. As some point the word fork sounded maybe 10 times per minute - it's ridiculous!

Coming back to the beginning of the review: the film is all about complaining. It starts out really pleasantly, but after the initial 40 minutes just spirals into "no one understands me" and "oh poor me". There are enough people like that in the world, why create another one for the film. I honestly have no sympathy for her. She'll live in these woods for the rest of her life and will base her whole personality on how one single evening in her life went.

As a sidenote, I wish the trailer showed more of what the film is actually like. It is more upbeat and positive than the actual film.