Eva Victor – Sorry, Baby

Eva plays Agnes, a young professor navigating life in the aftermath of sexual assault as she tries to rediscover joy, agency and healing – healing that, importantly for this magazine, involves a cat. The film also stars Naomi Ackie (a past PUSS PUSS cover star) as Lydie, Agnes’ best friend, and Lucas Hedges as Gavin, a neighbour with whom she begins an affair. With its raw performances and confident direction, Sorry, Baby all but guarantees Eva accolades in their directorial debut. I spoke with them shortly after their cover shoot for PUSS PUSS. They were in California, I was in London, and despite timezone differences, we were still drinking coffee.

PHOEBE ROBERTS: You’ve been open about how this film was inspired by personal trauma. Was there a moment when you realised that you could make art out of your experiences?

EVA VICTOR: I don’t even know if I’ve realised that yet! The pain of not writing about it was greater than the pain of writing it. Honestly, I didn’t even write it to be made; it was more something that I needed to exorcise. I just had so much to say about those years, and I wanted to document them in a way that I felt like I was in charge of, where I got to look at them and say, ‘This is how I see that time.’ I realise the movies that have impacted me the most are the ones that feel like they’re a shout to the world, like, ‘I’m here, I feel crazy. Is anyone else feeling like this?’ We’re showing how hard it is to be here and how hard it is to be alive. At least, that’s what I’m in pursuit of. It’s so interesting because you write this thing, you prepare to direct it, you direct it, you spend every day for five years thinking about this thing and how you want it to function and then suddenly, people are seeing it. It’s amazing, but there’s been very little time for processing, so I’m still trying to figure out what I’ve learned and what I’ll take with me. Sometimes, I feel like the lessons are more in your body and less in your mind.

Shushu/tong top & skirt

PR: You’re doing press on incredibly personal material. How are you decompressing?

EV: You know, I’m not really, but I also realise that I don’t know how to. I find that the most comforting things are being in bed and eating food that I really like and being with my cats. So I’ve been trying to do that every day, but it’s weird. There’s no end point. I kept asking people, ‘When is there a break?’ Once the film’s out, it’s out there walking around on its own and I guess I have to figure out how to exist without it. I’ve been sleeping a lot; I love to sleep. I sleep so much when I can. There’s nothing like that feeling when you are about to fall asleep. You know you’re gonna have coffee the next morning and all you have to do is go to sleep and then wake up and you get to have coffee. PR: I feel that! To pick up on what you were saying about there being no end, why structure the film that way? EV: I really wanted the film to start off with a burst of friendship between Agnes and Lydie. I just wanted everyone to laugh within the first 10 minutes of the film and feel this closeness because I do think that we tend to push away people who’ve been through this kind of trauma. We find ways to paint people as tragic figures when we find out something like this has happened, because it’s too painful to process the fact that something so devastating could happen and because of how scared we are of talking about this kind of trauma. I really wanted to give the audience a fighting chance at seeing these two people as whole people and to fall in love with them so that when something bad happens – later on in the film, but earlier chronologically – we can’t look away. I think that trauma makes time feel different depending on the situation, so I wanted it to move like it does when you have experienced something like that.

Shushu/tong top & skirt

Shushu/tong jumper, Susan Fang skirt

Dior jacket, Zadig & Voltaire shorts

PR: Violence is never shown on-screen. It’s referred to obliquely, as “the bad thing”.

EV: The reason why I made the film in the first place was to not show it. I couldn’t watch depictions that felt cruel or, conversely, too well done. I wanted to make a film for the person that I was who needed a film that was about this kind of pain that they could survive watching. There are other reasons too; you know, you never really get to see behind those closed doors. If you imagine filming something like that, it’s like, well, whose eyes are these that we’re watching the scene through?

PR: On to the idea of pleasure, the film explores Agnes’ journey to rediscover it. How do you see pleasure functioning in the story?

EV: There are two sexually intimate scenes in the film, and I really wanted the first one to be complicated and show this person that’s pretty dissociated and not in their body. It’s between Agnes and Gavin; Agnes isn’t in her body and Gavin can pick up on it. It’s not a bed scene – he doesn’t push towards anything, he’s not invasive. Later, they have this experience where Agnes gets to feel in her body and makes herself orgasm, and he’s a witness to that. He doesn’t make it happen per se, but he’s there. Gavin’s aware something really big is happening, but I don’t think he totally knows what, and then he says something weird as guys always do. He doesn’t mean it in a bad way, but he misses the mark and then she feels alone again. I liked having this sweet sort of puppy dog guy who doesn’t totally understand what he’s doing there, but who understands the magnitude of it. He serves the purpose of being a witness to someone’s return to the body for a moment. He’s a great momentary safe place for her.

PR: You wrote, directed, and starred in this project. Do you want to keep doing all three?

EV: There is something kind of magical when you read something or write something and you understand that it’s speaking to your soul and want to contribute in whatever way makes sense. However I can be most useful to the idea – that’s how I will make decisions going forward. But it’s a big task to do all three and I’m just very glad I was allowed to do it for this film. Honestly, I can’t imagine how I’d be feeling if I didn’t get to direct myself as an actor, because it meant so much when telling a story about losing physical control. It was very healing to get to be at the helm of something about this kind of loss of power. So, yeah, we’ll see.