
Eva Victor appears in Sorry, Baby by Eva Victor, an official selection of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Courtesy of Sundance Institute | photo by Mia Cioffi Henry.
One of the films that “sold” at Sundance 2025 (to A24) was the 103 minute comedy/drama feature “Sorry, Baby,” which went for $8 million. Shot in Massachusetts, it was also one of the films I had been looking forward to the most, because Lucas Hedges (Oscar-nominated for his role as Patrick Chandler in 2016’s “Manchester by the Sea” at 20 years of age) was cast as Gavin. The film was written, directed and starred Eva Victor as Agnes.
THE BAD
Eva Victor wrote an extremely small part for Lucas Hedges and totally wasted his presence for 2/3 of the film, preferring, instead, to focus on herself as the lead actress. Yes, it was a film about Agnes’ sexual experience with a married professor and her extreme (and belated) bad reaction to same, but when the talented now 29-year-old Hedges was onscreen, his part consisted primarily of an bathtub scene where his lines included, “I’m embarrassed and I was hiding my dick.” In fact, when he first appeared onscreen as Gavin, he almost immediately disappeared and it was not clear if he was going to return at all!
Ms. Victor responds to the awkward nude bathtub badinage with, “It’s okay. I was covering my breasts. Oh, wait. Can I look at it? I have never seen one that soft. They’re better like this.”
Probably not a scripted exchange that is going to garner Lucas Hedges his second Oscar nomination.
The scene that featured Ms. Victor with a baby was also weird.
I’m guessing that Eva Victor has no children, but, whether she does or not, the conversation she wrote for herself to have with a friend’s infant she is babysitting was strange. She talks about how the infant can tell her anything and says, “I’m sorry that bad things are going to happen to you. If I can ever stop bad things from happening, just let me know. I feel bad for you, in a way, but you’re alive and you don’t know that yet. But I can still listen and not be scared. So that’s good. Or that’s something at least.”
Again, probably not scripted dialogue that is going to win Ms. Victor Oscar nods.
I have two kids. I guarantee that this is not “normal” banter with an infant. If it had been comedic (see “Nightbitch”) I might feel differently, but it just struck me as reaching and unlikely and not normal in the world I inhabit.
The film was punctuated with sub-titles. “The Year with the Bad Thing” or “The Year with the Good Sandwich” onscreen as subtitled portions of the main story did not seem like a great idea. Some of the sub-titles were barely related to what we then saw onscreen.
The delayed PTSD concerning Agnes’ (Ms. Victor’s) interaction with her college professor seemed over-wrought and not very true-to-life (besides barely being depicted, since we just see her rush from the house.)
As a young college student, Ms. Victor’s character went to her married male professor’s house to discuss a paper. He made sexual advances, which are not described as that aggressive. In fact, the entire escapade was not very clearly depicted or described. Did Agnes actually feel she had been raped or…? Had she simply been a very bad judge of character in agreeing to visit the married professor’s house while his wife and family were out of town? Did he truly force himself upon her? Could she have said “no” more forcefully? She is shown pursuing the issue somewhat at the college offices on campus, but learns that the misbehaving professor (previously her favorite) has apparently already resigned and left town. (Quick work there!)
You’ll have to see the film when A24 streams it to answer the questions above for yourselves. Upsetting, yes.
To have a full-blown breakdown while behind the wheel of a car, years later? Seemed contrived. It did lead to a nice character turn from John Carroll Lynch as Pete, however,— (the genesis of “The Year of the Bad Sandwich” bad sub-title.) I thought back to Emerald Fennell’s master class in scripting the results of such an encounter in the 2020 film “Promising Young Woman” with Carrie Mulligan. A different premise, yes, and not meant to be humorous at any point, but at least what, exactly, had happened to that girl was clearly spelled out, rather than the muddied version here. At times, the episode seems to have severely and seriously impacted Agnes. At other times, she seems to have moved past the trauma fairly quickly—until a triggering incident while driving.
Just left me feeling that the behind-the-wheel PTSD scene was overblown and belonged in a different movie.
THE GOOD

Eva Victor, director of Sorry, Baby, an official selection of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Courtesy of Sundance Institute | photo by Lee Dubin.
There is a courtroom scene that was quite amusing. I hoped for more like that one—scenes that would seem natural and normal and life-like and realistic. It was well done. There were good lines here and there, such as, “I did not think I would end up looking like a yam with a mouth on it.” And it was nice to see more female directors/writers coming up through the ranks,.
Director of Photography Mia Cioffi Henry acquitted herself nobly and the music by Lia Quyang Rusli was good.
Here’s what “Ioncinema” said about “Sorry, Baby:” “We imagine it’ll be extra champagne uncorking for some of the A24 folks who landed the film for a cool 8 million dollars – today’s IndieWire poll of the Best of Sundance (as voted on by 176 critics) further confirms that the breakout film at this year’s Sundance Film Festival was Sorry, Baby – which placed highest not only in the Best Film category but also topped the Best Performance, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best First Film lists. Eva Victor‘s debut did not claim the Grand Jury Prize but did manage to win the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award and had several distributors on the chase to land the rights.”
That is heady praise and means I am out of step with the mainstream reaction. I have a theory that the reason it was praised so highly is that almost ALL of the rest of the Sundance offerings were about death, dying, illness, or other such catastrophes. It was hard to find a comedy—although “Andre Is An Idiot” would qualify, except for the fact that it’s about a terminally ill man cataloguing his last months on the planet.
CONCLUSION
For me, there was promise in the courtroom scene for a Funny Film of the Future. Just looking at the credits, it seemed that the writer/director/star highlighted herself overmuch, which ended up hurting the film. Wasting Lucas Hedges in his role as Gavin was but one example.
It was not a “bad” film, but I’m still scratching my head over the over-emphasis on Agnes and the timing of Agnes’ trauma, etc.. For me, the emphasis on Agnes’ trauma was inconsistent with a “comedy” and her breakdown was overdone. And, then, too, there was the waste of other talented cast members, like Naomi Ackie as best friend Lydie and Kelly McCormack as Natasha.
(And don’t get me started on the complete waste of the uber talented Lucas Hedges.)