Review: ‘Sorry, Baby' captures trauma's quiet aftermath

Eva Victor in a scene from "Sorry, Baby." (Mia Cioffy Henry/Associated Press)

"Sorry, Baby" is a movie made on its own terms. 

Over and over, the film comes up with ways to irritate, distance or bore the audience, and yet by the end it lands as a worthy and emotionally authentic experience.

It's written and directed by San Francisco-raised performer Eva Victor, who cast herself in the lead role, a strategy that, at least in the beginning, seems questionable. Victor is intelligent and original, but not inherently engaging, and the woman Victor plays is offbeat and odd. So right away we have a vaguely creepy protagonist played by a fairly unknown actress of limited appeal.

To make matters more difficult, Victor adopts an off-putting narrative strategy that zigzags through time. "Sorry, Baby" is told in five chapters, each with its own title (such as "The Year with the Bad Thing"). The effect gives the movie a start-and-stop quality, as if every 20 minutes, the film has to completely start over.

And the difficulties don't end there. 

Eva Victor, left, and John Carroll Lynch in a scene from "Sorry, Baby." (Philip Keith/Associated Press)

As a screenwriter, Victor has a fondness for scenes that have no story significance beyond how they happen to illustrate or impact the main character's emotional life. So we'll get a scene in which Agnes (Victor), a young, small-town English professor, ends up getting dismissed from jury duty for coming across as a weirdo.

More Information

"Sorry, Baby": Drama. Starring Eva Victor and Naomi Ackie. Directed by Eva Victor. (R. 103 minutes.) In theaters Friday, July 4.

The scene itself might be interesting, but there's no follow-up in the next scene. It's just its own disparate entity.

Finally, Victor seems to be operating from a narrative strategy (one is tempted to call it a narrative philosophy) of not showing you the obvious, but rather what you usually don't see. This is a risky approach, but Victor makes a case for it.

For example, there's a scene in which Agnes's best friend, Lydie (Naomi Ackie), leaves after a short visit. Instead of ending the scene with her leaving, Victor, as director, lingers to show Agnes minutes later, in the house. I'm not sure I've ever seen a movie that has better captured the dead silence that fills a house after a beloved guest has left.

More crucially, Victor doesn't film the "bad thing" that happens to Agnes. We just see the house in which the bad thing takes place. Then we see Agnes leaving and driving home, clearly stunned.

Naomi Ackie, left, and Eva Victor in a scene from "Sorry, Baby." (Associated Press)

This bad thing is the movie's pivotal event, which is later described by Agnes in ways that leave most aspects clear but others ambiguous. Victor is not interested in the strict legal definition of what happened to Agnes, but rather in showing the short- and long-term effects of trauma.

This is where Victor and the film distinguish themselves. To see any one scene in isolation is to come away with the impression that Victor is giving a withheld and somewhat peculiar performance. But, in fact, there's a distinct difference between Agnes before and after the "bad thing," just as there's a difference between Agnes one year after the bad thing and three years after.

Victor's performance is gradated in a way to make us appreciate, in a visceral way, what the film is intent on conveying: the lingering half-life of trauma. Trauma just doesn't go away at our convenience. Trauma is on its own schedule.

In this way, the casting of Victor as Agnes turns out to be ideal. Victims aren't always cuddly. Trauma can happen to prickly, idiosyncratic people, who will all suffer and recover in their own way.

"Sorry, Baby" attempts to tell a story about trauma as experienced in life and not as portrayed in the movies - and in its own distinct way, it succeeds. 

Mick LaSalle is the film critic emeritus of the Chronicle. Email: [email protected]