Cinema. "Sorry, Baby": An autobiographical tale of healing and resilience

Something has happened to Agnes. We won't see it: Eva Victor shows nothing. No point. The viewer knows perfectly well that on this door that we see closing, on this house seen from outside and sinking into the night, something, yes, has happened, that there is no need to stage it explicitly.

Sorry, Baby is perhaps a modest film. That's its choice. Everything happens off-screen. Imagination does the rest. The suggestion is sufficient. The sexual violence is neither exhibited nor surrounded by pathos. Instead: a touch of fantasy, burlesque, light irony. A strange detachment that embraces the dismay of the heroine Agnès—this Agnès who is a little off the wall, shaken by something that happened to her, but standing firm.

Everything hinges on this slightly eccentric character, lost and yet determined to move forward. Moreover, it is the aftermath of Agnès's life that interests the story. Eva Victor gives Agnès an expressive interpretation. Consistent behind the camera, radiant in front of it, Eva Victor does not indulge in victim-like pain or a collapse that would offer a victory to the perpetrator. She opposes him, in a flurry of enthusiasm, energy, and empathy, a luminous and formidable chronicle of survival, resilience, and rebirth, with ups and downs, with courage, vivacity, and life. Where love and friendship are also discussed.

With her way of advancing the story of injuries and trauma, with a kind of detached nonchalance and cold humor, the radiant Eva Victor signs a lively film. What happens to Agnès in the film happened to her too, the victim of a sexual assault. This is undoubtedly where the disarming sincerity of Sorry, Baby comes from, as precious as a raw testimony.

Sorry, Baby by Eva Victor, in theaters this Wednesday, July 23. Running time: 1 hour 44 minutes.