NZIFF 2025 Craccum Coverage | Sorry, Baby

Review by Madeline Smith

CW: discussions of sexual assault.

Eva Victor’s debut follows 4 years in the life of Agnes, a postgraduate literature student, and deals primarily with the effects of her supervisor’s sexual assault on her. The film tries to tackle the question of how to deal with the fact that ‘life goes on’ in the face of trauma. I put ‘life goes on’ in quotation marks because on one hand, the world doesn’t stop for you, and you often have to continue with your previous commitments, but it does not ‘go on’ in the sense that things will ever FEEL the same. It’s a disconnect that’s hard to deal with, especially when it can’t be felt by anyone else. Victor’s film has some effective formal choices, particularly in terms of how she represents the assault and its immediate aftermath without directly showing it. The choice to portray the long-term aftermath through humour (particularly in Agnes’ attempts to maintain it) is admirable, but I will admit that a lot of it didn’t land for me. For the lack of a better description, most of the dialogue has a millennial affectation that I found pretty grating. Some of this is just a matter of taste, but there are other comedic choices that I do think weaken the film’s dramatic integrity (such as the caricature-ish and rather mean-spirited portrayal of Natasha, Agnes’ colleague). There is a film I love in here, contained in one I don’t, but it is sure to resonate with its audience regardless.