Start the week with a film: ‘In ‘Sorry, Baby’, talking about rape and survival

Eva Victor’s Sorry, Baby is about the things women say to each other – about life and career goals, men and relationships – and sexual assault.

This unusual film – Victor’s first as a director – uses conversations to explore how sexual assault is to be processed. What is the vocabulary to be used? What must the survivor’s attitude be? How should people around her respond to her situation?

Victor plays Agnes, a literature student who is attracted to her professor Decker (Louis Cancelmi). After Decker assaults her, Agnes goes into shock. In the hospital, Agnes and her best friend Lydie (Naomi Ackie) are flippant to the point of being insensitive about the crime.

The pain kicks in later, when Agnes is by herself, alone at home with her thoughts and a kitten she has picked off the streets. Agnes to not be defined by pain, and yet acknowledge what has been done to her.

Her trauma isn’t spelt out but regularised, woven into her routine. Things people unknowingly say triggers her. She contemplates a relationship with her neighbour Gavin (Lucas Hedge).

Sorry, Baby can be rented from Prime Video and BookMyShow Stream. The film’s beauty, and achievement, is the confidence with which Victor uses gallows humour to explore Agnes’s dilemma. There’s a moving scene revolving around a sandwich shop owner.

The most compelling dynamic is between Agnes and Lydie, who is expecting a girl – the baby of the title, who will be brought into a world that treats women shabbily. While Victor is solid as Agnes, Naimo Ackie is terrific as the warm and deeply concerned Lydie.

Victor’s ode to resilience and courage dares to go into difficult places. The writer-director ensures that the journey is sensitive but humorous too. Sorry, Baby gently destroys notions of how rape survivors are supposed to behave. Much of Victor’s insights are contained in the excellent dialogue, which says the things that remain unsaid as well as the things that need to be said.