Eastlyn Frankel

Watched Sorry Baby today, and I think I need some time to sit with it. To be honest, I struggle a lot with the type of dialogue Eva uses - it feels a bit twee and overly earnest, and at times, it's awkward in a way that undercuts some of the more hard-hitting moments of the film for me. It also at times didn’t seem to make sense in the world of a movie - it was like Wes Anderson style dialogue. However, I think this did a great job of exploring a difficult topic through nuanced characters and perspectives. The symbolism was really interesting - one moment in particular that comes to mind is when Eva had to kill a mouse that her cat had dragged in, after she and her best friend discussed the fact that her best friend’s baby was probably the size of a mouse at that point. There’s this idea of breaking one’s innocence, which also comes up at the end of the film when she is apologizing to her best friend’s baby for the bad things that might happen to her. Honestly, I could see this being a truly incredible book, which is something I’ve noticed in many indie titles these days that seem to possess a literary quality. Another random thing that kept coming up for me was hair. The free-flowing nature of the character's hair when she is a grad student, to when she cuts it off after getting assaulted, was really interesting to me, and something I kept noticing.

I watched this film for the second time today and came away with a more nuanced understanding. At first, I was so stunned by the casual way this film depicts a 15-year-old girl having sex with her mother’s very much adult boyfriend. I found the story to be kind of meandering, and I wasn’t obsessed with the characters but I did really love the cartoon illustrations and Bell Powley’s portayal of Minnie. However after a second watch, I feel I was able to absorb more of the elements of discovering oneself and one’s sexuality at a young age. It makes me also think about my mad fat diary, and the ways that certain people are allowed to explore the sexuality and feel empowered while others explore their sexuality internally when they don’t get the validation that maybe they were hoping for. “Maybe nobody loves me” was a line at the end of the film and a constant theme running through the movie that I did find touching on this second watch. Very curious to see a more nuanced analysis of the depictions of young women’s sexuality and safe ways to explore it.