It’s rare to find a film like “Sorry, Baby” (2025) that is so assured in what it wants to say and how it wants to say it. Eva Victor achieves this with remarkable ease. The only thing many viewers, including me, knew about this film until its Sundance debut was an image of a woman holding a kitten in her hands and looking at it as if she feels for it with every fiber of her being. Victor kept the synopsis as vague as possible, letting the film do its work only when you watch it. Well, it works wonders.
The film wrecks your heart in pieces and finds a way to put it all back together through its seamless tonal transitions. One moment, it makes you giggle like a kid, and a few beats later, it leaves you with a lump in your throat. Then, there are those awkwardly funny moments where the film makes you sob because you know that they are equally heartfelt and deeply cathartic. The film may feel like a warm, comforting blanket even when its cold and tragic undertones linger in your mind. It all blends so well in this cleverly written drama. By the end, the film leaves you with a profoundly tender note in the healing journey of its protagonist. Yet, it’s as layered as the rest of the film.
Spoilers Ahead
Sorry, Baby (2025) Plot Summary & Movie Synopsis:
What happens in Sorry, Baby?
“Sorry, Baby,” written and directed by Eva Victor, follows a literature professor who’s healing from a traumatic incident that happened during her years at the college. Agnes (Eva Victor) starts teaching at the same liberal arts college where she had her education. She also lives in the same house that she used to share with her then-classmate, Lydie (Naomi Ackie). After college, Lydie gets married and moves to New York with her partner. Years later, she returns to meet Agnes and spend time with her. That’s when she breaks the news about her pregnancy. Agnes is happy for her and is curious how it all came about. Lydie happily shares those details, but it’s clear that she has something else on her mind. She is worried about Agnes’ well-being. Yet, her concern is rooted in something far more serious than usual.
At night, they both join their former classmates for dinner. They bring up the topic of their ex-professor, Preston Decker (Louis Cancelmi), and how he often preferred Agnes’s work to theirs. Years later, Agnes has the same job as Decker did and works at the same cabin that he used to. So, Natasha (Kelly McCormack) bluntly accuses her of benefiting from favoritism. Agnes feels hurt and leaves the room almost immediately. Unlike others, Lydie knows why. Back home, she asks Agnes about her current life and fleetingly mentions Decker’s office. Agnes doesn’t say anything specific, nor does Lydie push her to. Still, it’s clear that there’s something bad that happened in her past.
What is the traumatic event in Sorry, Baby?
While in college, Agnes admires Decker and his work, and so does he. Lydie notices that there’s more to it. She sees Agnes lit up with a smile as she receives a text from Decker. He praises Agnes’s thesis, calling it extraordinary. She admires his work and shares how she can’t stop thinking about it. One day, they need to reschedule their discussion about her work because he needs to run an errand for his ex-wife. At a later date, she shows up outside his office to discuss something. He asks her to meet him at his house. She walks there. He asks her to take her shoes off as she walks in. She stays there for a few hours. At night, she comes out alone carrying her shoes while he sees her from a distance.
Agnes struggles to walk down the stairs. She hurriedly puts on her shoes and returns to the campus to fetch her car. Someone tells her that her shoelaces are not tied. She doesn’t acknowledge him or his concern, and drives back home, traumatized by her time with Decker. That’s when she opens up about what happened to her. Decker sexually assaulted her. She recounts how she kept pushing his hand away and telling him that she doesn’t want to be touched. Still, he kept pursuing her to a point when she felt emotionally numb. Lydie doesn’t force her to spell it all out in any exact terms. Instead, she patiently sits aside and listens as Agnes pours her heart out about this traumatic incident, in words that she feels comfortable with.
Does Decker get punished for his crime?
The morning after the traumatic incident, Lydie joins Agnes at a hospital for a medical check-up. Unlike Lydie, the male doctor bluntly asks her details about her experience to note them down in his record. He’s cold, matter-of-fact, and insensitive. Later, at college, the faculty doesn’t understand the gravity of her situation either. They send two women to speak with her and reveal that they cannot take any action against Decker due to a technicality. He sent in his resignation before she filed the complaint. Unlike them, Agnes understands that Decker is running away. She knows that he wasn’t keen on the New York job, which he claims was behind his resignation.
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Yet, the fact remains that college administration doesn’t take any accountability. Instead, they send two women to hide their cowardice and tell Agnes to consult the police. The sheer trauma of it all makes her want to light his office on fire. Lydie realizes that she sees it as a symbolic gesture to ease her pain. No matter what, she is ready to do anything to help her friend out. Soon, Agnes changes her mind and does something else. She finds a kitten somewhere on the road and adopts it. It comforts her, but doesn’t help her get past her dread. At night, she covers her window with sheets from her thesis that he praised. A while later, she becomes a part-time professor at the college.
One day, she shows up in court and gets chosen to serve as a jury member. Upon being asked, she speaks about the incident to make the court realize that she is uncomfortable doing so. So, she gets excused from her duty. She doesn’t say in exact terms what happened to her, but reveals why she didn’t take any action against Decker. She mentions that he has a kid and how she wants him to be a better person. The lawyer realizes how difficult it would be for her to appeal in court, where she will have to recount the specifics of her emotional trauma to prove her case. Out of that understanding and compassion, she lets her go.
Sorry, Baby (2025) Movie Ending Explained:
By the end, we see Agnes being promoted from a part-time position to a full-time job at her college. She also gets into a sexual relationship with her neighbor, Gavin (Lucas Hedges). However, Natasha is still upset over how Decker treated Agnes in front of them as opposed to her. She meets Agnes at college and mentions how she once had sex with Decker. Agnes gets worried and tries to make sure that he hasn’t taken advantage of Natasha’s nature or where she stands in their power dynamic. She points out how people can act differently in different scenarios. They can make you feel seen, heard, or respected, but that doesn’t give you the complete picture of a person. Natasha says that she wanted to be with him that way.
It suddenly brings back Agnes’s traumatic memories. So, while driving home, she has a panic attack. She stops by a store to meet the owner (John Carroll Lynch), who understands what she is going through. He helps calm her down and offers her a sandwich as they start talking. She opens up about her trauma and how people feel scared for her as she starts talking about it. Unlike them, he makes her feel at ease around him. Later, back home, she wakes up to find a dying mouse that her cat caught. She puts it in a bag and helps relieve it from its misery. It makes her feel a sense of rush. That compels her to run over to Gavin’s house and ask him to have sex with her.
Yet, there’s something different about her at this moment. She doesn’t hide her intentions, but openly asks him for it. The F-word doesn’t seem accidental in this case. It feels monumental for her. It’s almost like that act of kindness toward that mouse led her to a sense of catharsis and made her finally open herself up to the world. This is what leads her to this moment. Throughout their time together, he asks her for consent and respects her wishes. So, she feels comfortable being emotionally vulnerable around him. It leads them to speak about their prospects and whether they want to have a family like everyone else.
What do the final moments with the baby mean?
While with Gavin, Agnes says that she doesn’t see herself starting a family. He mentions how these things can change over time for a person. He also points out that she can be a good mother. Yet, he doesn’t sound or seem threatening or demanding. He says these things only to make her comfortable with any kind of change in her life. He doesn’t force her to have his opinion, but only mentions what he believes can be the case. It seemingly helps her to be open to new experiences in her life.
Years later, Lydie shows up at her house with Fran (E.R. Fightmaster) and their baby. She realizes that the couple might want to spend some time together at a nearby lighthouse. So, she agrees to take care of their baby by the time they return. Fran is a bit apprehensive about it, but Lydie realizes what it means to Agnes. So, she agrees. Once they leave, Agnes holds the baby and says that she feels sorry for her being brought into a world where bad things can happen to people. In any case, she allows the bay to confide in her without the fear of judgment or making her feel what she felt. It feels like a profound moment in Agnes’s healing journey. The baby almost seems like an outlet that she can comfortably confide in. It’s a bittersweet moment that feels uplifting for her.
Sorry, Baby (2025) Movie Themes Analysed:
Intimacy, Healing, and Complexity of Experience
In one of the scenes, the film introduces the topic of the mode and the content of a communication. Agnes reveals a distinction between them as she speaks with a student who’s not comfortable with the content of Vladimir Nabokov’s novel, “Lolita.” As a professor, she wants them to be aware of this distinction while studying literature, but it also applies to other scenes and life in general. Earlier, the doctor was more focused on the content of his message, but Lydie was just as aware of its mode. It ties in with the film’s themes of intimacy and its intrinsic connection with emotional intelligence. Decker ignored both mode and content, while Gavin patiently addressed both.
The film subtly addresses it while taking us through Agnes’s healing process. It also admits that healing may not be a journey with a clear destination, but a continuous process. The final moments underline the same. Overall, the film advocates for the complexity of this experience, much like any other. That’s also why Agnes asks Natasha about her relationship with Decker. He may appear kind, but that may be to hide his murky motives. In their case, he is in a position of power, which he may take advantage of in case of any person in his life. The same complexity leads Agnes to tell the baby not to be afraid of sharing their dark thoughts. After all, it’s rarely what appears just on the surface.
