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Something very bad happened to Agnes. It\u2019s hinted at in the first segment of\u00a0Sorry, Baby<\/em>, when her best friend Lydie (Naomi Ackie) arrives for a visit, and asks Agnes (Eva Victor) if she feels comfortable having the office of their old English professor Preston Decker (Louis Cancelmi). It\u2019s fairly easy to infer what Lydie means by this, particularly once they go for dinner at the home of their former classmate Natasha (Kelly McCormack) and she snarkily remarks that Agnes was always \u201cDecker\u2019s favourite\u201d. Lydie politely changes the subject and gives Agnes\u2019s leg a reassuring squeeze.<\/p>\n There has been a deluge of films about sexual assault in the wake of MeToo, but for all the artistic capital (rightfully) afforded to survivors, precious little has materially changed within culture. Sometimes it feels as if there\u2019s more resentment than ever towards victims for daring speaking up \u2013 it\u2019s this reality that Eva Victor\u2019s directorial debut (which she wrote and stars in) captures so well, in which a woman is sexually assaulted by a man in a position of trust, and the according fall-out is the lack\u00a0<\/em>of fall-out. Nothing in the world at large changes; everything does in hers, revealed in non-chronological order, with a chapter for each year following the assault. When she goes to see a (male) doctor following her assault, he chastises her for not going to the ER immediately afterwards. He seems completely indifferent to the traumatic incident Agnes has experienced; all Agnes and Lydie can do in response is laugh.<\/p>\n What else can Agnes do? The perpetrator has already handed in his notice at college, and the school claim they\u2019re unable to open a case against him as a result. Agnes doesn\u2019t want to press charges against him because he has a child \u2013 and if she\u2019s treated like an inconvenience by medical staff and her school, who\u2019s to say the police would be any different? So Agnes internalises her pain. Over the course of the next four years, she lives her life in the same apartment she shared with Lydie during grad school, and teaches at the same college she used to attend. There\u2019s an unspoken sense that Agnes can\u2019t quite move on from the place; she sleepily haunts it, unable to find closure because no one \u2013 except Lydie \u2013 understands or acknowledges what happened to her.<\/p>\n It\u2019s the banality of enduring a sexual assault that Victor captures so well in her film; how the trauma lingers long in the body, even when you keep insisting to everyone (including yourself) that you\u2019re fine. When Agnes begins a tentative romance with her sweet neighbour Gavin (Lucas Hedges) she doesn\u2019t quite know how to respond to his affection; when she has a panic attack in her car, a gruff sandwich shop owner (John Carroll Lynch) coaches her through it and then makes her some food. These small moments of kindness \u2013 as well as the beautiful friendship between Agnes and Lydie \u2013 glimmer like flecks of gold on the bottom of a murky riverbed, demonstrating there is still some good in the world despite what happened to her. Good that also exists in Agnes\u2019 cat Olga, who she finds on the street as a kitten days after her assault, even if she eventually has to euthanise a mouse left in her bed.<\/p>\n This surprisingly violent mercy killing feels like an oddly cathartic moment for Agnes, who is symbolic of thousands of people who never receive justice after being assaulted, and reflects the strange rhythms of\u00a0Sorry, Baby\u00a0<\/em>\u2013 a film which doesn\u2019t pretend to have all the answers, but certainly understands the burden of shame placed on sexual assault survivors, and how navigating the world in the aftermath of assault feels like walking through dense fog, blinding reaching for a hand to guide you to the other side.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\nGet more Little White Lies<\/h3>\n<\/p><\/div>\n