Eva

British number three Katie Boulter’s poor run of form continued with a straight-sets loss to world number 44 Eva Lys in the first round of the Pan Pacific Open in Tokyo.

Boulter, 29, was beaten 6-2 6-1 in just one hour and 14 minutes by the 23-year-old German.

After coming through two rounds of qualifying, she was the only British player in the main draw after Emma Raducanu withdrew, ending her season early through illness.

The Briton was only able to win 50% of the points on her first serve and was broken five times by Lys.

This latest defeat caps a disappointing run of form, which has seen the former world number 29 unable to progress beyond the second round of a tournament since the Nottingham Open in June.

It also comes five days after the Briton lost in straight sets in the second round of the Japan Open by world number 51 Sorana Cirstea.

Elsewhere, British number four Fran Jones was beaten in straight sets by China’s Wang Xiyu in the first round of the Guangzhou Open.

Seventh seed Jones was broken four times in the match as she lost 6-4 6-4 to the world number 163.

Catherine Tyldesley says her returning Coronation Street character Eva Price is set to lock horns once more with nemesis Maria Connor, while a ‘scary’ new arrival will also see a clash

There’s set to be plenty of drama on Coronation Street as Eva Price makes her big return.

Catherine Tyldesley reprises her role very soon, and it seems there’s more than one character she will clash with. Viewers will recall Eva’s feud with Maria Connor over Aidan Connor, with catfights and even a fight in a water fountain on Eva’s wedding day.

Well, we can confirm that conflict between the characters is still very much there, and it will be reignited when Eva makes her comeback. But it isn’t just Maria that Eva is set to clash with, as a “scary” new character features in dramatic scenes with the new Rovers Return landlady.

Catherine told The Mirror: “I was so thrilled when Kate Brooks said we’d be playing that out [between Eva and Maria]. Kate referenced Gail Platt and Eileen Grimshaw, which I just absolutely loved.

“She is a dog with a bone, she will lock onto things in the same way that Maria does. And Eva really loved Aidan, she really loved him. Although she’s moved on and she loves Ben, she finds that very hard to let go of and she loves a grudge, so I think that’s going to be a long-term thing. Don’t let them near any water features, I think.”

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Then there’s Eva’s “mother-in-law from hell” Maggie Driscoll, and the pair do not get on. Catherine spilled: “I’ve watched a lot of what Pauline McLynn’s done and when I’m watching what she’s doing on set, sometimes I’ll just watch the monitor and I know I am seeing a Corrie icon.

“The writers have structured things for our characters, it’s hilarious, it’s constant jibes. But I think deep down, there’s a moment that we did not so long ago where Eva, in a roundabout way, says ‘If I wasn’t with Ben and I’d just met Maggie, I think we’d be mates.’ There’s a lot of similarities.

“They both love the family, they’re both striving for the same thing, it’s just that now and again they come to blows. But that’s great fun to play.” Things will get heated between them, with Catherine hinting that scenes will reveal just how “scary” Maggie can be.

She explained: “It’s an interesting one, because early doors, I wouldn’t say she’s scared of her, she’s more irritated by her. But as time goes on, Eva does start to see this side to her that’s like ‘Wow, okay, I’ve got your number’ and I think that element develops where she goes ‘Yeah, I am a little bit scared of her now and intimidated’, yes.”

There’s more nostalgia too when Eva bumps into her ex Adam Barlow, but Catherine says Eva’s new partner Ben has nothing to worry about. She told us: “The day that Eva left Weatherfield, Adam was slightly heartbroken but said ‘I really care about you.’

“They’ve maintained that and they’ve stayed in touch. You know when you can be friends with an ex – it’s rare, but it happens – and they’ve kept that. Ben doesn’t have anything to worry about there.”

Catherine also offered a glimpse of what we can expect with Eva being the new landlady. She shared: “I think it’s easy to underestimate Eva as a dizzy blonde. She does have that side to her and she’s great fun and can be dizzy and spontaneous but she is a very strong woman and we start to see even more reasons why, as time goes on, why she has got this inner strength.

“And also, she’s her mother’s daughter, Stella was a really strong woman, and that is probably part of the reason why her and Maggie clash so much, they’re such strong personalities. But again, to bring that fun dynamic into The Rovers, especially with Sean and Glenda, has just been an absolute scream.”

Catherine’s also thrilled to be reunited with co-stars Jane Danson and Georgia Taylor, who play Eva’s sisters Leanne and Toyah Battersby. She teased: “I’ve pretty much stayed in touch with everybody, so it’s extra lovely to come back to. That dynamic, the three witches reunited, it’s great.

“It’s strong women, again, and when they’re together, they’re even stronger, they’re a real force to be reckoned with. They’ve got each other’s backs, it’s that solidarity, it’s such a joy to play as an actress. The three concubines of Nick Tilsley, and the girls are just a dream and we’ve stayed in touch. I felt really welcomed by everyone, especially my sisters, so it’s great that we’ve got lots of stuff coming up together.”

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The second-seeded American reached her first semifinal since the French Open in June.

Coco Gauff put down a spirited challenge from 66th-ranked Eva Lys to earn a 6-3 6-4 victory in Beijing on Thursday and reach the China Open semifinals for a second successive year.

Gauff, who is bidding to become the first woman to win back-to-back titles at the WTA 1000 event, had battled through three-setters in the previous two rounds and had to overcome stiff resistance from the German.

“I’m happy with how I played today. She’s a tough opponent, she hit a couple of great shots on the run,” Gauff said.

“I think I need to stay confident in my game and not be too passive when I have the lead. I played one passive point in this match, but otherwise I played well.”

It was a fast and furious start to the first set as both players fired off a string of winners and traded early breaks as the momentum swung wildly.

Following a run of five straight breaks of serve it was defending champion Gauff who finally seized control, taking a 5-3 lead when Lys sent a backhand wide and then consolidating to clinch the first set.

The world number three appeared to have found her range on serve in the second set and eased through a couple of holds, but a brief wobble and a few double-faults from the American added some late drama.

Serving for the match at 5-4, however, Gauff held her nerve to close out the win in an hour and 28 minutes.

The two-time Grand Slam champion next faces either compatriot Amanda Anisimova or Italian Jasmine Paolini, who meet in the second quarterfinal on Thursday.

Her name was etched in the memory of millions thanks to her role as Gabrielle Solís in “Desperate Housewives,” a series that established Eva Longoria as one of the most influential Latina actresses in Hollywood.

She went on to become a producer, director, entrepreneur, activist and, in recent years, an investor in the world of sports, where she has earned the nickname “La Patrona” — or “The Boss” in English — which easily could be the title of a Mexican soap opera.

After more than two decades of credits and awards earned in the entertainment industry, Longoria has shifted her focus. Today, her role as “La Patrona” of Liga MX team Club Necaxa draws on her family’s roots, her passion for storytelling and her commitment to giving Mexico visibility in the world.

Her involvement was not limited to serving on Necaxa’s board of directors as a celebrity investor. From the beginning, she knew she wanted to tell a story. Inspired by Rob McElhenney and Ryan Reynolds’ “Welcome to Wrexham” docuseries, she decided to produce the the docuseries “Necaxa,” which premiered on Aug. 7 on FX. Cameras take viewers behind the scenes, follow along on road trips and offer an intimate look at the soccer team.

Rob McElhenney, left, and Eva Longoria stand on the field at Estadio Victoria, Liga MX team Club Necaxa’s home stadium.

(HANDOUT / FX)

Few could have imagined a Mexican American actress would become the leading front office voice for a historic Mexican soccer club, whose home stadium — Estadio Victoria — is located in the city of Aguascalientes in north-central Mexico.

In 2021, Longoria joined a group of investors who acquired 50% ownership of the team. McElhenney, the actor best known for the TV show “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” and Reynolds, who turned the mercenary Deadpool into one of the most beloved antiheroes in the Marvel universe, later joined the ownership group.

While restoring Necaxa to prominence in Liga MX was only a business and creative venture, it also had a deep personal component. Longoria grew up in Texas watching sports with her father, Enrique Longoria Jr.

“My dad can’t believe it. He doesn’t believe I’m ‘La Patrona,’” Longoria told L.A. Times en Español. “I’ll always be his little girl. … But I love sports because of my dad. My dad always watched the Dallas Cowboys, the Spurs, the Texas Rangers. … Every sport, I watched with him. I love sports because of the drama, the excitement, the ups and downs.”

In 2020, McElhenney and Reynolds acquired Wrexham AFC, a Welsh team that had been stuck in the National League — the fifth division of English soccer — since 2008. The team has steadily climbed the ranks to reach the Championship, just one step away from the top division, the Premier League.

Although promotion and relegation is no longer used in Liga MX, Longoria aspires to see Necaxa’s “Rayos” return to prominence in the Mexican soccer playoffs and is therefore seeking to mirror what her colleagues achieved with Wrexham AFC while flying the flag for her Mexican roots.

“This opportunity came from a group of investors who called me and asked if I wanted to be part of this project in the Mexican league. When they explained to me that the league has a huge audience, because there is so much beauty and talent coming out of Mexico, I decided to go for it,” said Longoria, who grew up in Corpus Christi, Texas, but now primarily splits her time between homes in Mexico and Spain. “I invested in the Necaxa team because I saw a great opportunity, not only as a business venture, but also as a great way to showcase Mexico and the most passionate sport in this beautiful country, to put Mexico on the map.

“When I have the opportunity to put Mexico or Mexicans on the map, I will always do so. Whether I’m producing or directing, that’s my philosophy in storytelling. That’s why I wanted to do this with the docuseries because I knew there was a story there that we had to tell.”

Eva Longoria is “La Patrona,” which translates to “The Boss,” in ‘Necaxa’ on FX.

(HANDOUT / FX)

Despite her ambition and determination, her first visit to Aguascalientes was fraught with uncertainty.

“I was very anxious and afraid because I am a woman, I am Mexican American,” she said. “I didn’t know if they would welcome me with open arms, but the truth is that they have welcomed me with open arms and I have been impressed by the local support.”

Although filming the docuseries is as important as any of her other projects, her work also involves finding the formula to return Necaxa to the prominence it had in the 1990s when it won its only three championships in the first division.

Her power as an international star has allowed her enter the locker room, which is considered a sacred space in the world of soccer.

After watching her confidently enter spaces around the club, the players dubbed her “La Patrona.”

“It’s a lot to manage a soccer club, behind the scenes, behind the docuseries,” Longoria said. “We’re so lucky to have access to the locker rooms, to go home with them. For me, it’s very important to have everything in one series, because I want the world to see it all. It’s not just about points and games; you’re talking about real lives.”

Longoria has also become a bridge between cultures and markets. As co-owner and original investor in Angel City FC in the National Women’s Soccer League, she recognizes the differences between soccer in the United States and Mexico. That experience, coupled with her connection to McElhenney and Reynolds, has shaped a broader vision.

“Here in Necaxa, there’s a saying: ‘If there’s no suffering, it’s not Necaxa.’ I’m explaining this saying to them, because the fans have embraced the idea that you have to suffer to win,” she said. “Rob and Ryan know a little bit about this, and we wanted to explore that idea in the series.”

Diego González, Necaxa’s head of media relations, said Longoria’s arrival marked a turning point for the club.

“It’s something unexpected, something surprising to have something like this with Necaxa and Aguascalientes,” he said of the docuseries. “It’s seeing inside Club Necaxa. Getting to know not only the player, but the people, the city … lots of emotions, lots of feelings that represent what soccer is and how it’s lived in Necaxa.”

Opening the doors to the cameras was not easy, according to González, but Longoria’s presence made it possible.

“It’s something that is highly respected, that intimacy of the locker rooms, the training camps, the trips. The players had to get used to it, but the professionalism of the club and the production team helped. You’ll notice it in the series: it feels so natural because that’s how it was,” said González, whom the players call “Sheldon” because of his resemblance to the character Sheldon Cooper from the sitcom “The Big Bang Theory.”

He describes Longoria’s relationship with the team as close and genuine.

“When she arrived in Aguascalientes, she showed herself as she is, even nervous, but without wanting to impose anything,” González said. “That naturalness helped the players feel comfortable. You don’t know how to treat a superstar, but she gives you the confidence to approach her and talk about anything.”

The influence of Longoria, McElhenney and Reynolds has gone beyond the locker room. They have put Necaxa on the international map.

“The most visible thing is the international showcase they can give you,” González said. “Necaxa was already known for its soccer merits, but now you have fans of Rob, Ryan, Eva, even Wrexham. A whole range of important possibilities has opened up for us, and that’s thanks to them.”

This article first appeared in Spanish via L.A. Times en Español.

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).

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.

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.

There is a simple tattoo of a windowpane on the middle finger of Eva Victor’s right hand. When I ask about it, the filmmaker launches into a story that involves miscommunication with an Italian tattoo artist while on a trip to Paris.

“I drew this really intricate fine-line tattoo of a window with all these curtains and little things in it,” explains Victor. “And I went to the woman and she was like, ‘I cannot do that.’ And I was like, ‘OK, what can you do?’ And she drew a box with lines in it and I was like, “OK, let’s do that.’ And she did it.”

With a little distance and perspective, what could have been a permanent disaster now means something else.

“It seriously is a really rough tattoo,” Victor adds with a lighthearted laugh. “But, you know, life is life. And that’s my tattoo and I have it on my hand every day of my life.”

Much like “Sorry, Baby,” the debut feature that Victor wrote, directed and starred in, the tattoo story is one that begins in odd whimsy but takes an unexpected turn toward something deeper, a personal journey.

“I have a lot of tattoos that are day-of tattoos,” Victor, 31, says. “Sometimes with big decisions I find it’s easier to just do it. It matters more to me that I’m doing this than what it is.

Seeing it every day, the little window is a reminder of another life. “It is definitely like a memory of a person I was who would do something like that,” she adds.

“Sorry, Baby” premiered earlier this year at the Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award and was picked up for distribution by indie powerhouse A24. The film more recently played at Cannes and opens in limited release this week.

Told via a literary-inspired chapter structure across five years, the story follows Agnes (Victor), a professor at the small East Coast liberal arts college where she was also a grad student, as she tenuously recovers from the free fall following a sexual assault by one of her instructors. Naomi Ackie (also recently seen in “Blink Twice” and “Mickey 17”) brings an openhearted allegiance to Agnes’ best friend Lydie, who, over the course of the film, comes out as gay, marries a woman and has a baby, while Lucas Hedges plays a sympathetic neighbor.

Eva Victor in the movie “Sorry, Baby.”

(A24)

It’s a recent quiet Monday morning at a West Hollywood vegetarian restaurant where we meet and Victor, who uses they/she pronouns and identifies as queer, peruses the menu with a mix of curiosity and enthusiasm.

Victor is a self-described pescatarian but will make the odd exception for a slider at a fancy party or a bite of the pork and green chile stew at Dunsmoor in Glassell Park, a favorite. Having moved to Los Angeles a little over a year ago to work on the editing of “Sorry, Baby,” Victor has settled into living in Silver Lake with their cat, Clyde.

“I love it — I do,” Victor says with quiet conviction. “It’s very comforting. I have all my little things I get when I’m home, but it’s been a while since I’ve been home for a bit. So I’m looking forward to being able to rest at home soon.”

After breakfast, Victor will head to the airport to go shoot a small acting part in an unnamed project and by the end of the week will make a talk show debut with an appearance on the “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert.”

“It’s been very intense for me,” Victor says of the period following Sundance. “I’m very interested in my privacy and also in routine of the day. I really like having things I do every day. It’s weird to go from making a movie for four years, basically, that nobody knows about. And then it premieres at Sundance and that’s how people find out about it and everyone finds out about it in the same night. That is a very bizarre experience for the body.”

Victor adds, “It does feel like there are a lot of layers between me and the film at this point.”

There’s an unusual, angular physicality to Victor’s performance in “Sorry, Baby,” as Agnes struggles to reengage with her own body following the assault, mostly referred to in the film as “the bad thing.”

“I keep hearing, ‘Oh, Agnes is so awkward.’ I’m like, ‘What the hell?’” says Victor, protectively. “I’m very humbled by people’s reactions to how bizarre they think that character is because I’m like: ‘Oh, I thought she was acting legitimately normal, but OK.’”

“It’s life-affirming for me to know that I wrote the film in a leap-of-faith way to be like: ‘Is anyone else feeling like this?’” says Victor. “And it’s nice to know that there are people who are understanding what that is.”

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

Victor, grew up in San Francisco and studied playwriting and acting at Northwestern University, moving to New York City after graduation with ambitions to work as a staffer on a late-night talk show. She got a job writing for the satirical website Reductress and began making short online videos of herself, many of which became offbeat viral comedy hits for the way they jabbed at contemporary culture, including “me explaining to my boyfriend why we’re going to straight pride” and “me when I def did not murder my husband,” and “the girl from the movie who doesn’t believe in love.” She also appeared as a performer on the final three seasons of the series “Billions.”

The character sketches of those videos only hinted at the nuance and complexity of which Victor was capable. Throughout “Sorry, Baby” there is a care and delicacy to how the most sensitive and vulnerable moments are handled. In the film, the sexual assault itself occurs offscreen — we don’t see it or hear it — as a shot of the facade of the teacher’s house depicts the passage of time from day to night. Later, Agnes sits in the bath as she describes to Lydie what happened, a moment made all the more disarming for the tinges of humor that Victor still manages to bring.

“At the end of the day, I really wanted to make a film about trying to heal,” Victor says. “And about love getting you through really hard times. And so the violence is not depicted in the film and not structurally the big plot point of the film. The big plot point of the film in my opinion is Agnes telling Lydie what happened and her holding it very well. That to me is sort of what we’re building to in the film — these moments in friendship over time and the loneliness of a person in between those moments.”

The relationship between Agnes and Lydie forms much of the core of “Sorry, Baby,” with the chemistry between Victor and Ackie giving off a rare warmth and understanding. The connection between the two actors as performers happened straight away.

“The script was so incredible that, to be honest with you, I already felt like I knew them,” says Ackie on a Zoom call from New York City. “There was something about the rhythm of how the writing was that made me feel like we might have something in common. When I was reading it to myself, it felt so natural in my mouth. And then we finally met and it was like all of the humor and the heart and the tragedy of the script was suddenly in a person. There was a sense of ease in the way we were talking and openness and a joyfulness and an excitedness that was kind of instantaneous.”

Naomi Ackie, left, and Eva Victor in the movie “Sorry, Baby.”

(A24)

The film is the product of an unusual development process spurred by producers Barry Jenkins, Adele Romanski and Mark Ceryak. Based on their fandom of Victor’s online videos, Jenkins reached out through DMs and set up a meeting, setting in motion the process that would eventually lead to a screenplay for “Sorry, Baby.”

“When Ava sent the first draft of ‘Sorry, Baby,’ it arrived in the way that the most special things have for me, which is fully formed,” says Romanski. “Not to say that we didn’t then go back and continue to refine it, but it just arrived so clear and so emotional. It hit from the first draft. So it felt like it would be such a shame not to figure out how to put that into a visual form that other people could experience what we were able to experience just from reading it.”

From there, the team set about making Victor feel comfortable and confident as both a filmmaker and a performer. Having already had experience working with first-time feature directors such as Charlotte Wells on “Aftersun” and Raven Jackson on “All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt,” the producing trio knew the process would require extra care and attention.

“Part of the reason this challenge felt possible is how much work we’ve done in how best to support a director in that debut space,” says Romanski. “There was a lot of confidence and assuredness around how to be that producer for that first-time filmmaker.”

The team arranged something of an unofficial directing fellowship, allowing Victor to shoot a few scenes from the script and then sit down with an editor to discuss how to improve on the footage. Victor made shot lists after watching Jenkins’ “Moonlight” and Kelly Reichardt’s “Certain Women,” leaning further into the mechanics of how to visually construct scenes. Victor also shadowed filmmaker Jane Schoenbrun during production for last year’s acclaimed “I Saw the TV Glow.”

“There was no prescriptive timeline to the course that it took,” explains Romanski. “It was just kind of, we’ll keep finding things to help you fortify and put on directorial muscle mass until you tell us, ‘I’m ready.’ And then when you say, ‘I’m ready,’ we’ll pivot to putting the movie together. There’s no blueprint for this, at least not for us. We haven’t done it quite like this before, but that’s also what’s exciting about it.”

Without ever sharing specifics, the story is rooted in Victor’s personal experience. Going back to some of their earliest press around 2018, Victor would self-describe as a sexual assault survivor. There was material about it in a stand-up comedy routine. (“It didn’t work,” Victor notes, dryly, adding that they longer do stand-up.)

The experience of making the movie and putting it out into the world has been one of potentially being continually retriggered, sent back to emotions and feelings Victor has worked hard to move forward from. Yet the process of making the film began to provide its own rewards.

“The thing about this kind of trauma is it is someone deciding where your body goes without your permission,” Victor says. “And that is surreal and absurd and very difficult. It’s very difficult to make sense of the world after something like that happens.”

The “Sorry, Baby” shoot in Massachusetts last year was a turning point, says Victor, one of validation. “The experience of directing myself as an actor is an experience of saying: This is where my body’s going right now,” says Victor. “And a crew of 60 people being like, ‘Yes.’ It’s this really special experience of being like, ‘I am saying where my body goes’ and everyone agrees. In the making of the film, that was very powerful to me.”

Eva Victor and John Carroll Lynch in the movie “Sorry, Baby.”

(A24)

Even with the success of “Sorry, Baby” and the way it has launched Victor to a new level of attention and acclaim, there is a tinge of melancholy to discovering just how many people are connecting to the film because it speaks to their own experiences.

“It’s a very personal film for a lot of people and there’s a sadness to that because it’s a community of people who have experienced things that they shouldn’t have had to,” says Victor. “It’s life-affirming for me to know that I wrote the film in a leap-of-faith way to be like: ‘Is anyone else feeling like this?’ And it’s nice to know that there are people who are understanding what that is.”

While recently back in France, Victor got another tattoo, this time on her foot, where she doesn’t see it as often.

“Maybe there’s a dash of mental illness in it,” says Victor. “But I think with tattoos, it’s such a good one, because it’s not going to hurt you but it is intense and permanent. So it is risk-taking.”

That attention to a small shift in personal perspective, a change in action and how one approaches the world, is part of what makes “Sorry, Baby” such a powerful experience. And as it now continues to make its way out to more audiences, Victor’s experience with it continues to evolve as well.

“There is a process that’s happening right now where it’s like an exhale. I’m like, whatever will be will be,” Victor says. “Putting something out into the world is a process of letting go of it. And I had my time with it and I got to make it what I wanted it to be. And now it will over time not be mine.”

The experience of making “Sorry, Baby” has pushed Victor forward both professionally and personally, finding catharsis in creativity and community.

“I guess that is the deal,” Victor offers. “That is part of the journey of releasing something. I mean it’s legitimately called a release.”