Sexual violence in movie has typically been framed in stark binaries — tales of victims and villains, of clear crimes and straightforward resolutions. However actual life isn’t so easy. Eva Victor’s Sorry, Child, produced by Barry Jenkins, exists within the grey areas, the moments after, the time misplaced, the issues which can be by no means mentioned out loud however press into each interplay. This can be a movie about aftermaths, not simply of sexual assault, however of friendship, ambition, and the quiet, bureaucratic violence of establishments that fail ladies of their most weak moments.
Victor, who writes, directs, and stars as Agnes, crafts a movie that’s each structurally unconventional and emotionally uncooked. Informed in a collection of vignettes with titles like “The 12 months with the Child,” “The 12 months with the Dangerous Factor,” and “The 12 months with the Good Sandwich,” Sorry, Child understands trauma as one thing nonlinear, transferring in suits and begins, lurching ahead and pulling again. Agnes isn’t just processing an assault; she is processing how to course of, testing out methods to maneuver ahead whereas the world round her continues on, oblivious.
The Fragmented Language of Reminiscence
Sorry, Child
3.5
/5
- Launch Date
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January 27, 2025
- Runtime
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104 minutes
- Director
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Eva Victor
- Writers
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Eva Victor
- Producers
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Alex Orlovsky, Michael B. Clark, Adele Romanski, Barry Jenkins, Duncan Montgomery, Carole Baraton, Jack Selby, Lia Buman, Tim Headington, Alex Turtletaub, Mark Ceryak, Neil Shah, Ana Leocha
- A splendidly assured debut, with a distinctly advanced character.
- A realistically sophisticated portrait of trauma and the way it’s processed.
- Nice, natural supporting performances and a few genuinely humorous moments.
- It is a bit too fragmented to really feel like a full movie, and the enhancing is disorienting.
The movie’s segmented construction is greater than a stylistic alternative; it’s a reflection of how trauma fractures time. Agnes, a professor, is profitable, revered, and seemingly composed. However the movie’s lengthy, quiet photographs of her driving or sitting alone in her home betray a unique actuality, one the place she remains to be tethered to the previous, caught within the geography of her personal assault. A room, a hallway, the workplace the place it occurred — these areas turn into each prisons and battlegrounds.
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Victor’s use of sound design is especially hanging. When Agnes drives, the engine noise and radio chatter fluctuate, mirroring the methods through which reminiscence will be intrusive or distant, sudden or numbing. As an alternative of depicting the assault in specific phrases, the movie makes use of shifts in lighting, coloration, and rhythm to indicate its influence, preserving the viewers tethered to Agnes’s emotional expertise slightly than sensationalizing the occasion itself.
This can be a movie that understands how energy capabilities in institutional settings, not simply when it comes to the assault itself, however in the best way it’s processed (or not) afterward. The office paperwork of reporting a sexual assault is laid naked — the quiet dismissals, the ready, the paperwork, the best way that, even in circumstances the place guilt is established, justice not often follows. The truth that Agnes chooses to not go to the police is a choice that doesn’t have to be defined however is deeply understood.
Comedy as a Protection Mechanism
Agnes is humorous. Witty, sharp, and self-aware, she makes existential jokes about suicide and life’s absurdity, deploying humor as a approach to sidestep what she doesn’t need to face. It’s uncommon in movie to see a survivor who’s sophisticated, neither an emblem of resilience nor completely damaged, however somebody who shifts between each states.
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Lucas Hedges, taking part in Gavin, a neighbor and potential romantic curiosity, brings an understated efficiency, one that’s neither predatory nor overtly supportive. He exists as most males do in these narratives — someplace between assist and hurt, not totally conscious of what Agnes carries. It’s Naomi Ackie’s Lydie, Agnes’s finest good friend, who emerges because the emotional counterweight to Agnes’s isolation. Their friendship is marked by passive-aggressive jabs, deep care, and unstated resentments, and feels actual in the best way that solely long-term friendships can. Lydie is pregnant, transferring into a brand new section of life, whereas Agnes stays caught, and the movie doesn’t shrink back from the ache of that rising hole.
One of the poignant moments in Sorry, Child comes when Agnes whispers to herself, “I don’t need him to die.” The movie doesn’t make a spectacle of this confession, however when it’s later revealed that the reason being “as a result of he has a child,” it cuts deep. It’s a uncommon acknowledgment in these narratives that the world doesn’t all the time break neatly into classes of fine and evil, and that violence leaves behind unintended penalties.
Sexuality, Motherhood, and the Physique After Trauma
Considered one of Sorry, Child’s strongest threads is its exploration of the physique post-trauma — not simply when it comes to ache, however when it comes to pleasure, need, and the shifting relationship between sexuality and security. As Agnes begins to reclaim her sense of self, the movie subtly interrogates the concept of intimacy after violence. The inclusion of a scene the place Agnes will get a kitten — so typically a shorthand for therapeutic in movie — feels each ironic and honest, an emblem of care that isn’t overwrought.
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The strain between motherhood and trauma can be central to the movie. As Lydie prepares for the arrival of her child, Agnes struggles to course of what it means to be each a protector and a survivor. There’s a second the place Agnes is requested, “Do you want her?” — referring to the newborn. The hesitation earlier than answering isn’t seen in portrayals of latest life, however it speaks volumes. The movie doesn’t drive its characters into neat arcs of therapeutic or decision however permits them area to stay unresolved.
A Movie That Asks, Not Solutions
Maybe the best power of Sorry, Child is its refusal to adapt to expectations. It doesn’t supply simple catharsis, nor does it bask in distress. It’s about how time strikes in a different way for survivors, how life goes on for everybody else whereas they continue to be suspended.
Victor, in her characteristic debut, proves to be a filmmaker of uncommon restraint and emotional intelligence. She trusts her viewers to take a seat in discomfort, to piece collectively the fragments of Agnes’s journey with out forcing exposition. The movie’s vignettes act as emotional checkpoints slightly than narrative waypoints, capturing the ebb and movement of therapeutic in a manner that feels profoundly actual.
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In an period the place conversations round sexual violence are sometimes diminished to authorized outcomes and media spectacle, Sorry, Child is an act of resistance — a narrative in regards to the moments in between, about what it means to stay with what occurred slightly than be outlined by it. It’s a movie that lingers, not due to shock or sensationalism, however as a result of it understands the quiet, persistent nature of trauma.
It’s, in the end, a movie about survival. Not within the dramatic, triumphant sense, however within the on a regular basis one. The type the place you continue to should reply emails, make small speak, and eat an excellent sandwich, even when your world has come aside. As a result of, as Sorry, Child understands so nicely, life goes on. Simply not for everybody on the identical velocity. Sorry, Child screened on the 2025 Sundance Movie Competition. Discover extra data right here.