Tag: Trauma

SORRY, BABY – Review

Eva Victor as Agnes, in writer/director Eva Victor’s indie drama/comedy SORRY, BABY. Courtesy of A24.

Offbeat independent drama/comedy SORRY, BABY accomplishes a rare feat, combining a smart, witty yet touching drama about recovery from trauma with a surprising dark humor and social commentary, while also offering a portrait of the power of true friendship. SORRY, BABY is a different kind of story about pain and healing, a portrait of a quirky, appealing woman named Agnes, who seems fine at work but secretly is stuck still struggling with the pain of a traumatic experience from her graduate student days, while everyone else has moved on. Ultimately, Agnes finds a way towards healing, with the help of her best friend, the only person who really gets her.

Eva Victor directs, wrote and stars in SORRY, BABY, her directorial debut film, which opened at Sundance to critical acclaim. While it finds dark humor in unexpected situations, SORRY, BABY also a drama that always feels honest and real, in that odd, strange way real life sometimes is. That realism is part of the appeal of SORRY, BABY and its tale of pain and healing in real life, seen through a dark humor lens.

When we first meet her, Agnes (Eva Victor) is an English professor at a small New England college but she is still grappling emotionally with a traumatic event that happened when she was a graduate student, where she was a star pupil recognized as a gifted writer. With a quirky, quiet, easy-going personality, the professor is well-liked by both students and colleagues, (apart from one jealous one), but her calm, stoic surface conceals a pain that few know about. Everyone has moved on after her traumatic assault but it still haunts her. Only her best friend Lydie (Naomi Ackie), who shares her offbeat sense of humor, really gets Agnes, and understands the depth of her hidden trauma. A visit from Lydie helps Eva recognize how stuck she is, prompting her to move towards healing.

Director/writer/star Eva Victor structures this drama/dark comedy beautifully, starting midway in the story and then flashing back and forward in chapters. SORRY, BABY is divided into chapters and it told out of sequence but does not leave us confused by the end. Starting in the middle lets us see how stuck Agnes is, while life and everyone else has moved on from the trauma that still haunts her. Agnes conceals her pain from her students and colleagues, but it is expressed in odd ways, like using her graduate thesis to paper her windows in place of curtains. The story is told in little chapters with oddball titles, where flashbacks let us see the cause of her pain, and the flash forwards let us see her progress towards healing, as life inevitable moves forward. It is quite an impressive first film, polished, moving and appealing, and one of the year’s best so far.

One of the magical aspects of this film is how it can take a serious scene and wring unexpected comedy from it, while revealing and mocking the false concern and hurtful behavior underneath the surface. After Agnes’ traumatic experience, she meets with representatives of her college, who make all the right concerned noises, while dodging responsibility and doing nothing helpful. It is both strikingly pointed commentary and darkly funny, and not the only scene that fits that description.

Part of the key to that, and the success of the film as a whole, is the cast, particularly Eva Victor and Naomi Ackie. As Agnes and Lydie, the pair are very funny and very believable as best friends who share a weird sense of humor that can’t be suppressed. After Agnes experiences her traumatic event, Lydie is her ever-present support, always there but often with a joke as she staunchly stands up for her friend, when she can’t speak for herself. The scenes where Lydie defends her less-assertive friend Agnes are often laugh-out-loud funny, in situations that are anything but humorous, while the scenes also offer very pointed commentary on how victims of assault are treated by in cookie-cutter fashion by institutions that should be helping.

The cast is strong throughout this indie film, and those excellent performances help this offbeat drama/comedy win us over. Eva Victor gives a splendid nuanced performance, revealing Agnes’s hidden pain in unconventional way, while she maintains a stoic if pleasant face to the world. Only Lydie really sees what is going on, as Agnes struggles with the pain she is stuck in, and Naomi Ackie delivers a winning performance as Agnes’ bestie Lydie.

Other cast members also excel, with Louis Cancelmi, Kelly McCormack and Lucas Hedges in supporting roles, dramatic and comic. All turn in well-crafted performances that support the narrative well, in both its serious or lighter moments.

SORRY, BABY is an unexpected delight, one of the year’s best so far, a unique film that is appealing and moving, offering an different approach to healing after trauma, and a tribute to the power of friendship.

SORRY, BABY opens in theaters Friday, Aug. 1, 2025.

RATING: 4 out of 4 stars

CAUSEWAY – Review

Jennifer Lawrence in CAUSEWAY. Courtesy of AppleTV+

Jennifer Lawrence gives a heart-rending performance as a wounded Afghan war veteran healing from injuries, obvious and not, in Lila Neugebauer’s drama CAUSEWAY. CAUSEWAY, about a friendship that grows between two people still healing from injuries, has a contemplative pace but it is a fine showcase for Jennifer Lawrence, too long absent from this kind of in-depth role, and reminding us how very talented she is. The film played at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival and now is opening in theaters as well as streaming.

Lynsey (Lawrence) was an Army engineer serving in Afghanistan when an IED blew up her truck and sent her home to recover from extensive neurological trauma, but we meet her while she is still very disabled and slowly recovering. In tender, touching scenes, we see her character’s helplessness and frustration at the need, as she receives treatment at an rehab center, then in the home of a caring older woman. Lynsey’s injuries effected her brain as well as her body but both are making progress. When she is deemed well enough to be discharged to her mother’s home, where Lynsey grew up, in New Orleans, she clearly has doubts. But she is reassured arrangements have been made for her mother to meet her bus when it arrives in NOLA. She doesn’t.

Nonetheless, Lynsey finds her way there, where she is greeted affectionately by her mother Gloria (an excellent Linda Emond), who has been busy drinking and dancing at home with a boyfriend that she doesn’t bother to introduce to her daughter. With a sigh, Lynsey settles in to her childhood home, keeping her unreliable mother at arm’s length.

The mother is played splendidly by Linda Emond, who portrays her as a woman who seems to want to have a warmer relationship with her daughter but can’t quite follow-through. As Lynsey regains more strength and mobility, she sets up regular doctor’s appoints with Dr. Lucas (Stephen McKinley Henderson, in another of the fine smaller performances that dot this heart-felt drama). She used a borrowed truck, to get about but when the truck breaks down, a kindly mechanic named James (Brian Tyree Henry) offers her a lift and encourages her to get the truck fixed, even if it is not hers. The two strike up a tentative friendship, which grows slowly over time and picks up when Lynsey notices his prosthetic leg.

It is not romance but shared trauma that draws these two broken people together, but the feeling is deep. Plot-wise, there is not much to CAUSEWAY but as a showcase for Jennifer Lawrence, it is outstanding, and the same can be said for co-star Brian Tyree Henry.

Jennifer Lawrence does an outstanding job drawing us into Lynsey’s inner life. Lynsey is adrift, staying in a home to which she never expected to return and missing the camaraderie of the service, to which she still hopes to return. Her awkward relationship with her less-than-reliable mother does not help and while there is talk about a brother, he is notably absent. To pass the time, Lynsey takes a job cleaning pools, something she did as a teen, saying to her new employer that she just “likes water.” Cleaning pools on her own seems to settle her, going about it in an almost meditative way, and enjoying the occasional solitary swim. Periodically she encounters the mechanic, and they share a drink in a bar or an ice cream at a street-side stand, and just hang out. Sometimes she needles him to swim in one of the pools she is maintaining for out-of-town owners. He is happy to hang out at the pools with her, but is wary of the water.

Visually, this New Orleans has a quiet, languid beauty, with people living a simple life far removed from the French Quarter party. Nothing much happens for long stretches but the effect is more relaxing, even hypnotic, than one expects. We see a lot of graceful, greenery-encircled pools that invite a swim, something Lawrence does from time to time.

That same quietness marks the scenes between Jennifer Lawrence and Brian Tyree Henry too, scenes that are touching and warm, as the two share secrets and experiences. Both actors are at the top of their game, and work superbly together. There is a sense of loss that is often palpable in the air, and heartrendingly so when James recounts how he lost his leg.

As a showcase for the actors, CAUSEWAY shines. It is a treat to see Lawrence put through her acting paces her, and hopefully this will spark a return to bigger serious roles. Brian Tyree Henry is a revelation in his role, and it is hoped this signals bigger things for him as well.

CAUSEWAY opens Friday, Nov. 4, in select theaters and streaming on Apple TV+.

New Season Surprises, and Some Not So Surprising

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With all the new shows that the networks put out it can be hard to tell which ones will be sure fire hits and which ones just won’t click with anybody, not no way not no how.   So I decided to look at the new shows this season, the ones that are still around anyway, and look at the new stock that are doing surprisingly well and the ones that shouldn’t be too surprising are hits.   And I’d like to give a shout out to Trauma. Sorry Trauma, but it looks like the world doesn’t need yet another medical show, but at least Mercy seems to be hanging in there for the moment.

The Surprising:

1. Cougar Town- I’m sorry but I thought this show had disaster written all over it.   Mostly for the fact that its main focus is to just jumping on a fad that has sprouted up in recent years, a fad of super hot older women.   I guess that shouldn’t be too surprising of a draw but it just seems like the light version of Desperate Housewives with a one joke premise.   Plus after the failure of her show Dirt I’m surprised anyone really wanted to see Courtney Cox helming yet another show.

2. FlashForward-I really thought that this show was going to face an almost expected Heroes like failure, even though Heroes is still on but look at the ratings.   This show on the other hand has ratings to spare.   I guess maybe it’s just it has a Lost style of appeal and a catchy sci-fi plot that people really seem to be digging.   I haven’t really watched it and I’ve heard it’s good so I will at least give it props for that.   But usually good and sci-fi-ish plot don’t mix well with network viewers on a mass scale.

The Not So Surprising:

1.NCIS:Los Angeles-This really has to be at the top of the list because who wouldn’t have seen this being a monster huge hit? It’s become a tired and true formula.take a popular procedural, slap another cities name on the end, and boom you’ve got yourself an all new sure fire ratings hit.   I’m not a huge fan of procedurals or the fact that everyone else seems to love them and watch everyone stupid spin off they shoot down the line.   This one even has the added benefit of Chris O’Donnell and LL Cool Jfor your team up of having two washed up stars being the leads.

2. Glee-Who doesn’t love Glee?   This show had hit written all over it the second it aired on the tube.   You’ve got your basic High School drama that all the teens love these days.   Then you have kids singing harmonized versions of hit songs that I will admit that I even love.   And for added effect you thrown in a little Jane Lynch as one of the best and kookiest villains this side of John Adams High, Boy Meets World reference for all you TV geeks.   So that’s all you really need to have probably the best new show of the season and its future secure for quite awhile.

3. Modern Family-It’s a really a how the whole “modern” family can love.   God I can’t believe I went with that pun.   Anyway, this show is a no surprise hit for a very good reason, it does its humor smart.  It keeps it very family oriented and never going too vulgar but also keeps the jokes fresh and inventive and always with a witty tone.   I watched the pilot and have to say I was convinced enough of the goodness of the show and usually the pilot is the weakest of the episodes you can get.   So it should be no surprise that it keeps chugging along as a hit and one of the better reviewed shows of the season so far.