CW: discussions of sexual assault and trauma below

Everything seemed normal that faintly Autumn evening. If you gazed out a window, you’d see leaves falling off trees, townsfolk strolling home, maybe some birds lurking on telephone wires. If you looked outside your window at just the right moment, though, you’d see a woman walking back to her car in a daze. This was not a normal evening for her.  On the contrary, this was the night that changed Agnes (Eva Victor) forever.

But that’s not where writer/director Victor begins Sorry, Baby. Instead, it kicks off with pure, unfiltered joy four years after that fateful day. Agnes reunites with her eternal best friend Lydie (an excellent Naomi Ackie, adding another outstanding performance to her recent hot streak). The pair hug and spend hours talking in the little cottage Agnes calls home while working as a professor. During their exchanges, the pair discuss the future, including Lydie’s increasingly serious relationship with her partner. Even as they look toward tomorrow, the past asserts itself. While not often, the conversation repeatedly leads to Lydie making reference to an “event” or trauma Agnes experienced years earlier.

Though Agnes puts on a dry, sarcastic wit in her day-to-day life, there’s more going on with her. Her aching eyes and pained voice as she pleads with Lydie to return very soon make it clear the ripple effects of that trauma still linger. Perhaps they always will. This is how Victor’s non-linear screenplay (told across five chunks) begins exploring Agnes’ psyche and world. It abandons standard narrative and character arc structures to illustrate the jagged experiences of existing in the aftermath of a sexual assault. It’s a bold maneuver, especially considering this is Victor’s first film as a director and as a writer. However, to say this striking technique pays off is an understatement. Sorry, Baby is a triumph of quietly observational cinema.

Four years ago, Agnes was just another graduate school student trying to finish up a thesis paper. To accomplish this and other academic pursuits, she and Lydie worked in a study group session overseen by Preston Decker (Louis Cancelmi). This man takes Agnes under his wing and labels her writing as “extraordinary.” Decker even invites her to his house. It is there that the unthinkable transgression occurs. Victor and cinematographer Mia Cioffi Henry employ wide frames with lots of empty space in this sequence, a visual motif they’ll return to throughout the film.

Audiences never see the interior of Decker’s home. Victor and Henry instead keep the camera locked on a pulled-back image of his house as afternoon, evening, and night pass, emphasizing something is wrong. When a shell-shocked Agnes emerges, her tininess in the frame instantly shatters your heart. These striking images achingly capture how alone and outmatched she suddenly feels in the world. The betrayal and violation traps her in a void mirrored by these expansive shots.

Such gut-wrenching images crystallize Sorry, Baby’s precise focus on Agnes’ psychological state. However, the film refuses to remain confined to that space. The visual and thematic emphasis informs an appropriately complicated tone, subverting the traditionally atmospherically one-note approach to sexual trauma survivors in cinema. Sorry, Baby, even with its harrowing inciting incident, is a very funny movie.

Part of that humor comes from Victor (a veteran of the satirical website Reductress) and Henry having such a sharp grasp on visual comedy. Take, for example, an early scene in Decker’s study group session when he compliments Agnes. A medium shot captures Agnes’ silent gratitude move across her facial features. A moment later, jealous student Natasha (Kelly McCormack) pokes her head into the right side of the frame, visually achieving her fondest wish. To make everything about her.

Scientifically, characters abruptly entering a frame are always a humorous sight. Victor and Henry understand this and other time-worn staples of visual gags, including a later scene of Agnes berating her cat’s behavior. It gets a lot of comedic mileage out of keeping this exchange off-screen. Laughs also emerge from frank, wry dialogue that characterizes how Agnes in particular speaks. A scene depicting her encountering the aforementioned feline for the first time is utterly hysterical in how she expresses her immediate love for the critter in such unpoetic phrasing.

The follow-up to this kitten encounter heartbreakingly captures why Sorry, Baby’s comedy is so important. Just as Agnes is feeling renewed joy with her newfound companion, her eyes catch sight of something in the grocery check-out lane. Right there is Decker…or at least a man who looks like him. Reminders of that night can come from anywhere at any time. Strangers at previously safe places, encountering the boots she wore that night, and especially the thesis pages she once treasured. Steering into lighter material only to suddenly smash viewers with reminders of Agnes’ trauma ingeniously mirrors her daily psychological minefield.

Victor consistently finds striking ways to visually reflect their protagonist’s complex reality throughout. One of their most evocative creations involves Agnes sitting in her room at night preparing to board her window. Simultaneously, the soundtrack’s audio features a phone call from earlier in the day between Agnes and Lydie, joyfully sharing euphoric news. It’s a vivid depiction of how external bliss and internal torment are always at war in this character’s head.

Such psychologically insightful and dramatically absorbing material litters every inch of Sorry, Baby’s screenplay. Aside from helming and writing some Eva vs. Anxiety episodes, this is Eva Victor’s first time stepping behind the camera or writing a script. Yet their artistic prowess on this feature is so staggeringly assured. The bumpy creative choices plaguing some indie directorial debuts aren’t even on the radar of this extraordinary project. That includes their confident embrace of incredibly subdued scenes. These unhurried, naturalistic sensibilities would make Kelly Reichardt proud.

The appropriately agonizing scene where Agnes recounts her sexual assault to Lydie for the first time, for instance, eschews any orchestral music and relies only on close-up shots of these two characters. It’s an intimate, streamlined execution, placing all the emphasis on Agnes’ testimony. Similarly, a later touching scene of Agnes talking about life with sandwich shop owner Pete (John Carroll Lynch in a remarkable one-scene turn) is so tender because of its laid-back pacing and lack of dialogue-based epiphanies.

Opting for a “less is more” style in these and other scenes lets great performances and Victor’s insightful script truly shine. It also means superbly realized visual motifs, such as framing Agnes and other characters in separate window muntins, which effectively gradually wash over moviegoers rather than upending the measured ambiance.

Sorry, Baby is a movie of profound, quiet wisdom. For one thing, it reaffirms the reality that unspeakable trauma and sexual violence can happen anywhere, including on seemingly ordinary evenings. In following the life of Agnes, though, the production’s intimate gaze captures cognitive despair and relief coming from anywhere. Those brutal aspects of reality are often tough to artistically realize. The intricately extraordinary Sorry, Baby, though, excels in this challenge. Like friendships making life a little more bearable, a motion picture this good is well worth treasuring.

Sorry, Baby is open in select theatres now and going wide July 18.

Sorry, Baby Trailer: