Movie Review: ‘Sorry, Baby’ July 10, 2025By Kurt Jensen OSV News Filed Under: Movie & Television Reviews NEW YORK – It’s too simplistic to refer to “Sorry, Baby” (A24) as a #MeToo movie. Yet the film is topical as well as important and compelling. There was a time when its main plot point would only have been shared woman-to-woman. That was before daytime TV programs and nighttime dramas brought in light to dissipate shame. Even today, writer-director Eva Victor’s picture, in which she also stars, is anything but easy viewing. Yet, while the tale it tells is sometimes painful, it’s intimate and droll as well. This is one woman’s frank account of a sexual assault and of her recovery. It involves harsh satirical portrayals of authority figures, including the police, who fail to help her seek justice. Instead, she has to figure out her own path forward, one awkward step at a time. Victor plays Agnes, a promising graduate student at a small, rural New England university. The story is laid out in five chapters, each representing a year. But these are not dealt with chronologically. Some shuttling back and forth is needed in order to explain fully her relationships to other characters. Agnes has a best friend and onetime housemate, Lydie (Naomi Ackie), with whom she shares all her deepest thoughts, while her love of literature and aspirations to become a writer are encouraged by her faculty thesis adviser, Professor Decker (Louis Cancelmi). Decker, it turns out, however, is less a nurturing mentor than a predator. The attack itself is not seen. Victor shows long shots of Decker’s house, where the incident takes place, over a series of hours, ending with Agnes stumbling out in shock. She tells Lydie about it in detail while in a tub, going over every confusing moment. Agnes already knows, before the police tell her, that it’s too late for a rape kit. But she’s further crushed to find that the university will do nothing to hold Decker to account, since he resigned the day after committing his crime. Agnes is not pregnant, and there is no mention of abortion as a possible outcome. “I can feel in my body that it was really bad,” Agnes says. “But there’s a reason, even if I can’t see it.” The rest of the movie shows how Agnes, instead of giving way to anger and embitterment, builds her coping skills in the midst of routine activities. These include jury duty, a potential trigger for reviving the trauma. In another brief scene, Decker is revealed to have preyed on one of Agnes’ classmates as well. Most impressively, Agnes joins the faculty, moves into Decker’s former office and becomes an instinctively sensitive teacher of difficult fictional texts. Collapsing in anguish is not something she ever considers an option. She moves on courageously, although this is not done by forgetting, but rather by attempting to accumulate wisdom. The film contains three scenes of implied sexual activity, mature material, including a sexual assault theme, an incidental homosexual relationship and an out-of-wedlock pregnancy, occasional banter and intermittent rough language. The OSV News classification is L — limited adult audience, films whose problematic content many adults would find troubling. The Motion Picture Association rating is R — restricted. Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian. Read More Movie & Television Reviews Movie Review: ‘Send Help’ Exploring Catherine O’Hara’s Catholic roots Home viewing roundup: What’s available to stream and what’s on horizon Movie Review: ‘Mercy’ Brigitte Bardot, the Church and Legion of Decency Home viewing roundup: What’s available to stream and what’s on horizon Copyright © 2025 OSV News Print
