In ‘Sorry, Baby,’ a young professor harbors private pain and a new voice emerges

Agnes (Eva Victor) has the face of a classical Hollywood movie star but she dresses like an old fisherman. Her expressions are inscrutable; you never know what’s going to come out of her mouth or how. When asked on a written questionnaire how her friends would describe her, she puts down “smart,” crosses it out, then replaces it with “tall.” She is all of those things: tall, smart, striking, endearingly awkward, hard to read. And she is an utterly captivating, entirely unique cinematic presence, the planet around which orbits “Sorry, Baby,” the debut feature of Victor, who not only stars but writes and directs.

Agnes’ backstory, revealed in time, is a distressingly common one of sexual assault, recounted with bursts of wild honesty, searing insight and unexpected humor. Victor’s screenplay earned her the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award at the Sundance Film Festival this year, where the film had its premiere. As a writer and performer, Victor allows Agnes to relay what happened in her own way while keeping the most intimate horrors protected.

Set in the frigid environs of the English department at a rural Massachusetts university, “Sorry, Baby” carries a literary quality, emphasized by nonchronological titled chapters (e.g., “The Year With the Baby,” “The Year With the Bad Thing,”) carefully establishing our protagonist, the world she inhabits and a few nagging questions.

Agnes is a professor of English at the university where she completed her graduate studies, but we first meet her as the best friend of Lydie (Naomi Ackie), who arrives for a winter weekend visit. Two codependent besties reunited, they snuggle on the couch and laugh about sex. Lydie delights at the mystery man who turns up on her friend’s doorstep — a friendly, familiar neighbor named Gavin (Lucas Hedges).

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But Lydie’s quiet concern for her friend is also palpable. When she reveals her pregnancy to Agnes, she says, “There’s something I need to tell you about my body,” as if Agnes is a child who needs gentle explanation. And in a strange way, Agnes seems to take to this childlike role with her friend. Lydie carefully probes her about her office and its previous occupant. She presses her about remaining in this town. Isn’t it “a lot”? “It’s a lot to be wherever,” Agnes replies. Lydie requests of her, “Don’t die” and Agnes reassures her she would have already killed herself if she was going to. It’s cold comfort, a phrase that could capably describe the entire vibe of “Sorry, Baby.”

Victor then flips back to an earlier chapter, before their graduation, to a time when Agnes seems less calcified in her idiosyncrasies. Their thesis advisor, Preston Decker (Louis Cancelmi), handsome and harried, tells Agnes her work is “extraordinary” and reschedules a meeting due to a child-care emergency. They both end up at his home, where dusk turns to night.

What ensues is what you expect and dread, though we only hear about it when Agnes recounts the excruciating details of the incident to Lydie later that night. The fallout renders Agnes emotionally stunted, running alternately on autopilot and impulse. Lydie fiercely protects (and enables) her friend until she has to move on with her life, leaving Agnes frozen in amber in that house, that office, that town, that night.

There’s an architectural quality to Victor’s style in the film’s structure and thoughtful editing, and in the lingering shots of buildings standing starkly against an icy sky, glowing windows beckoning or concealing from within: a representation of a singular kind of brittle, poignant New England stoicism. Victor captures Agnes the same way.

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Thanks to the profound and nuanced honesty Victor extracts from each moment, “Sorry, Baby” is a movie that lingers. Even when Agnes does something outlandish or implausible — turning up on foot at Gavin’s door in a tizzy is one of her curious quirks — it feels true to the character.

But Agnes is a mystery even to herself, it seems, tamping down her feelings until they come tumbling out in strange ways. She goes about her daily life in a never-ending cycle of repression and explosion, cracking until she shatters completely. Her most important journey is to find a place to be soft again.

The only catharsis or healing to be found in the film comes from the titular apology, more a rueful word of caution than anything else. We can never be fully protected from what life has in store for us, nor from the acts of selfishness or cruelty that cause us to harden and retreat into the protective cocoon of a huge jacket, a small town, an empty house.

Life — and the people in it — will break us sometimes. But there are still kittens and warm baths and best friends and really good sandwiches. There are still artists like Victor who share stories like this with such detailed emotion. Sometimes that’s enough to glue us back together, at least for a little while.