Review of Victor, Eva. Sorry Baby. A24, 2025

Abstract

This review examines Sorry, Baby (2025), Eva Victor’s directorial debut, which blends dark comedy with a nuanced portrayal of trauma and recovery. Written, directed, and performed by Victor, the film follows Agnes, a literature professor navigating the aftermath of sexual assault, through a fragmented narrative structure that reflects the nonlinear nature of memory and healing. The review highlights Victor’s feminist reworking of Lolita (1955), a central intertext in both Agnes’s academic life and the film’s thematic framework. By inverting Nabokov’s narrative strategies, particularly the use of humor and irony, Sorry, Baby shifts narrative authority from perpetrator to survivor, framing humor as a coping mechanism rather than a tool of manipulation. Ultimately, the review argues that Sorry, Baby offers an empowering counter-narrative to exploitative depictions of sexual violence, reshaping how survivor stories can be told in contemporary cinema.