Parky At the Pictures (5/9/2025)

(Reviews of Sorry, Baby; and Row)

SORRY, BABY.

Encouraged by Moonlight director, Barry Jenkins, Eva Victor wrote their directorial debut while they were sharing a friend's house in Maine during Covid lockdown. Already an established actress, Victor also takes the lead in Sorry, Baby, a five-chaptered satire on modern womanhood that is made even more disconcertingly compelling by its troubling #MeToo dimension.

Now in her late twenties, Agnes Ward (Eva Victor) teaches literature at the Fairpoint liberal arts college in Massachusetts. She lives in a remote mansard-roofed cottage with her cat, Olga, and is excited to get a visit from her best friend and former roommate, Lydia (Naomi Ackie), who has gone to live in New York with her partner, Fran (E.R. Fightmaster). Lydie announces that she is pregnant by a sperm donation and they go out to celebrate with fellow alumni, Logan (Jordan Mendoza), Devin (Cody Reiss), and Natasha (Kelly McCormack), with the latter still feeling bitter that Agnes got a post she felt she deserved.

A flashback shows Agnes as a thesis candidate and part-time tutor under the supervision of Professor Preston Decker (Louis Cancelmi). He is feeling morose, as his marriage has failed, and not even a compliment about his first novel cheers him up. But he still manages to summon some enthusiasm for Agnes's writing on the art of the short story and he gifts her his prized first edition of Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse.

As there is a full-time teaching post up for grabs, Natasha is doing her darndest to impress Decker. She even sleeps with him. But Agnes had never thought of him as a predator and goes to his home for an evening thesis review without any hesitation. By the time she leaves in the middle of the night, however, she has been sexually assaulted and Lydie consoles her as she sits in the bath and struggles to process what has happened to her.

Lydie accompanies Agnes to the hospital the following morning and is appalled by the insensitivity of the male doctor who chides her for not reporting the offence to the police before she washed away the biological evidence. Yet she receives little more sympathy from the two women on the Fairpoint disciplinary panel because they no longer have any jurisdiction over Decker because he has resigned.

Tempted to set fire to Decker's office, Agnes decides to let the matter drop, as she doesn't want to press charges because Decker is a father. Instead, she adopts a stray kitten and embarks upon a friends with benefits relationship with her bashful neighbour, Gavin (Lucas Hedges). As time passes, Agnes gets back into the rhythms of college life, even enjoying shocking her woke Gen Z students by teaching them Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita.

However, she realises that she is still struggling to come to terms with her ordeal when she is summoned for jury duty and admits during assessment that she doesn't feel she could be impartial, as she has so little faith in a penal system that would have punished Decker for his crime without making him a better man. Shortly afterward, she finds herself sitting in Decker's office, as she has been offered a full-time post. Natasha comes to complain that she has been cheated and Agnes feels sorry that she had given herself to Decker to no avail. On her way home, however, she has a panic attack at the wheel and pulls into a roadside sandwich shop. The owner, Pete (John Carroll Lynch), realises that she's in distress and makes her the house special so that she can regain her composure looking over the lake. Arriving home, Agnes trudges across the fields to ask Gavin to sleep with her and her faith is further restored by a guileless post-coital snuggle-chat in the bath.

Shortly after Lydie has her daughter, she pays the still vulnerable Agnes a visit, with the massively protective Fran in tow. When they go for a walk to explore the nearby lighthouse, Agnes dandles baby Jane and apologises to her for the fact that she has been born into an often cruel and unforgiving world. However, she promises to always be there if she needs a chat and reassures her that she the chances are good that she is going to have a nice life.

Tinged with a heady mix of optimism and sadness, this closing speech makes a deep impression, as one is left to despair at the randomness of existence, which means that one innocent child will grow up to be good, while another is condemned to be bad. It may not be the most original or profound rumination, but it hits a nerve at the end of Agnes's journey to forgive herself for the violation that changed her life.

Just as a sequel to Josh Radnor's Liberal Arts (2012) would have been fascinating, it would be nice to see how she and Gavin get on in future years, as there's something endearing about their mutual gratitude for being accepted for who they are. But consolation can still be derived from the contemplation of their Schrödingerian relationship, even though one gets the feeling that Agnes and Fran are never going to be close, with the same being doubly true in the case of Natasha.

However, inspired by Kenneth Lonergan's Margaret (2011) and Kelly Reichardt's Certain Women (2016), the 30 year-old, non-binary Victor has succeeded in creating characters for the audience to care about, while telling an elliptical mumblecorean story that demands their attention, as Victor celebrates the everyday on-screen while significant events occur some place off. They also explore such pertinent issues as the difficulty of being an independent woman in the 2020s, the way that society is geared to perpetuate rather than punish toxic masculinity, and the damaging feebleness of lip-service feminism. Most pressingly, they show how hard it is to recalibrate one's emotions, sense of self, and ability to trust after being subjected to sexual abuse, especially when other women prove so unsupportive.

Victor's subtle shifts in limning Agnes's personality before and after her rape are as potently poignant as the little hand squeeze that Lydie gives her friend when they meet up with their old college pals and Decker's name comes up. But, even though it should be, this isn't the kind of performance that wins major awards. The same goes for the screenplay, which deftly treads the fine line between the comic and the melancholic (the correct term, apparently, is `traumedy') without succumbing to simplistic gender faultlines or cornball compromise.

This tone is reinforced by the insouciant attentiveness of Mia Cioffi Henry's camerawork, the intuitive rightness of Caity Birmingham's production design, and the measured pacing of Randi Atkins and Alex O'Flinn's editing, which is complemented by Lia Ouyang Rusli's thoughtful score. The support playing is also first rate, with the deadpan sandwich scene between Victor and John Carroll Lynch reminding viewers that there are some decent blokes left. But one has to wonder whether the scene in which Agnes crushes a wounded mouse with a heavy book was really necessary.

ROW.

Director Matthew Losasso has racked up over 100 credits since leaving the BBC to go freelance. The visuals are highly impressive in his feature debut, Row, as he generates both a claustrophobic sense of peril and a simmering air of suspense. His storytelling, however, is rather less assured.

When Megan Taylor (Bella Dayne) washes up on a beach on the Isle of Hoy in the Orkneys, she is taken to a nearby guest house to recuperate under the watchful eyes of a nurse (Melody Grove) and DCI MacKelly (Tam Dean Burn). Her first thought is for her mother (Joanna Roth), who had been dying of cancer when Megan embarked upon a once-in-a-lifetime attempt to break the record for a four-person crew rowing across the Atlantic. The expedition had been organised by Daniel King (Akshay Khanna), a poor little rich boy who is determined to prove himself to the wealthy father who has bought him the ocean rowing boat and kitted it out for the 28-day, 2300-mile jaunt.

Daniel and Megan had expected to be joined by Adam (Mark Strepan) and his girlfriend, Lexi Townsend (Sophie Skelton), with the plan being for two crew members to handle the oars while the others rested, either on deck or in the cramped cabin, which was to double as a galley and a bedroom. However, Adam had broken his leg in the days before the launch and he had been replaced by Mike Regelio (Nick Skaugen), a stranger whose credentials go unquestioned as the craft leaves Newfoundland for Ireland.

Confined to bed, the dehydrated and malnourished Megan tries to recall the events of her ordeal. She can't be sure whether she is remembering facts or experiencing post-traumatic distress. But MacKelly reassures her that everything will be fine, as he hovers over her with ominous benevolence.

Initially, everyone pulls together and good progress is made. However, Lexi's bubbly good humour is clouded by suspicions that Adam has been sleeping with someone else. It doesn't take long for her to realise that it was Megan. But tensions between the pair are swiftly forgotten when Mike falls ill and has to be confined to bed, where he talks about Rachel in his sleep. Desperate to keep to the schedule, Daniel becomes dictatorial and his mood is not improved when he discovers that the motor has been damaged by a hair band.

Delusional with fever, Mike emerges from the cabin brandishing a knife and muttering something about a woman named Rachel (Jenny Quinn). Daniel knocks him out with an oar, but Mike has no recollection of his rampage when he wakes the next morning to take his next shift. Checking on supplies, Megan and Lexi confront Daniel about a shortfall and he admits to having tossed sachets overboard (as well as the fresh water meter) in order to lighten the load.

Storm-tossed waves buffet the boat and Megan falls overboard. However, Mike dives in to rescue her and Lexi is so relieved when she regains consciousness that she forgives her for cheating with Adam. But their rapprochement doesn't last long, as Daniel discovers that the water pouches have been sabotaged, along with the generator. This means they have no power to charge phones and have to rely on a sextant to plot their course. Worse follows when Lexi suffers a head injury during an attempted mutiny against Daniel, who has been in contact with his father by phone and has discovered that Mike is an impostor who has stowed away on the boat after killing Rachel.

With Daniel bound on the deck, a knife-wielding Megan also incapacitates Mike and only cuts him free after he agrees to row into a shipping lane so they can let off a flare. Struggling to hold it together, Megan is distraught when Lexi dies. She blames Daniel, who had insisted that she would get to a hospital sooner if they reached Ireland rather than hoping to flag down a passing ship. Consequently, when the boat capsizes during a storm, she cuts Daniel's tether line when he tries to clamber aboard. But she says nothing to Mike, who has survived the spill.

Drifting and reduced to drinking urine, the pair confide in each other, with Megan confessing to casting Daniel adrift and Mike admitting to Rachel's murder. However, Megan still doesn't trust Mike and always carries the kitchen knife with her. She is dismayed when a lurch causes her to stab Mike in the side. He accepts that she hadn't intended to wound him, but he grows weaker, even though a downpour provides them with fresh drinking water. Mike dies shortly after catching a fish and this is the last thing that Megan eats before she reaches land.

Her appetite has yet to return and her recollections remain vague when MacKelly informs her that the boat has been found. He also tells her that he is bringing someone out to Hoy to see her, only to handcuff her to the bed when she creeps on to the landing to see who it is. She is surprised to see Adam, who sits on the bed to berate her for causing such carnage. He admits that he had punctured the water pouches, as he had wanted them to abandon the crossing so that he could be part of the second attempt. But he refuses to have his life ruined because they hadn't had the sense to row back to Canada and he hobbles away on crutches leaving Megan to take the blame.

She pleads her innocence. But MacKelly refuses to listen to her, even denying Mike's existence. He charges her with the murders of Daniel and Lexi and the film ends with Megan being surrounded by police officers on a rubber dingy riding the rolling waves, as she is transported back to the mainland. The contrast couldn't be starker to the opening image of Megan gripping a knife, as bodies lie strewn across the blood-spattered deck.

At no point to we see Megan giving her side of the story to MacKelly, so the only evidence the audience has comes from a combination of her confused mind, fevered imagination, and treacherous subconscious. Yet, Megan can only be an unreliable narrator because Losasso and co-scenarist Nick Skaugen have opted to give her no backstory beyond an oblique reference to a dying mother and an intimation of sexual opportunism. Nothing is said about the background that would suit her for an arduous transatlantic excursion or how Daniel came to select her and the couple with whom she just happened to be ménaging.

But a lot of things don't make much sense in this narrative. Even if Daniel is heading a foolhardy vanity project, he would still have made provision for the boat to be tracked by some sort of mission control. World record attempts like this simply don't happen in glorious isolation, while even a neglectful father like Daniel's must have noticed that he suddenly stopped calling from the boat. Things can go very wrong at sea, as documentarist Marco Antonio Orsini revealed in Beyond the Sea (2024), which chronicled the misadventures of Egyptian rowers, Omar Nour and Omar Samra, during the 2017 Talisker Whisky Atlantic Challenge. But there's little nautical authenticity on view in Row. Indeed, judging by the cast's oarsmanship, this quartet would inevitably get into difficulty on the Regent's Park Boating Lake.

The performances are admirable, with Sophie Skelton's vivacity, Akshay Khanna's arrogance, and Nick Skaugen's furtiveness all contrasting effectively with the Girl Scoutishness that Bella Dayne exhibits afloat and the enigmaticism she displays on her sick bed. Cinematographer Zoran Veljkovic complements the performances with close-ups that not only emphasise the proximity of the characters, but also their psychological isolation after the problems start to arise. Losasso's editing similarly reinforces the growing unease, although he also makes a slick job of intercutting between location shots and footage filmed in a studio tank and the odd bit of CGI.

Kyle Kirkpatrick's score and Stephen Crawley's sound mix also work together compellingly. But the survivalist story drags in places, exposing the contrived nature of the scenario and the sketchiness of the characterisation. Clearly, Losasso has not set out to make an actuality, just as Alfred Hitchcock didn't with Lifeboat (1943). But much of the drama is too specious to convince, while the final rug-pull is rather cumbersomely handled. Nevertheless, the insights into identity, trust, and paranoia are intriguing, while his Losasso is to be commended for making such ambitious debut on what was evidently a modest budget.