In its intimacy and naked truth-telling, “Sorry, Baby” is the kind of independent movie that can seem like a gift. It’s an outwardly unassuming story of a woman, Agnes, grappling with the aftermath of an assault that has rearranged both her head and her world without destroying either. The movie has moments that can make you wince, but it’s often wryly and tartly funny because life is absurd and complicated, and people are, too. Something horrible happened to Agnes, and that horrible thing remains in her, body and soul. It changed how she lives, has sex and sleeps. Yet every morning it’s still Agnes who gets up; she’s still here.

“Sorry, Baby” is the striking feature directorial debut of Eva Victor, who also wrote and stars as Agnes. Quick-witted and sharp-tongued, Agnes is a tenured English lit professor when the movie opens, teaching in a university in a New England town. She seems relatively happy or at least settled, though also unsettled. With her cat, she lives in a pleasantly ordinary, two-story house with white clapboards that could use a paint job. It’s cozy inside, with comfortable chairs and stacks of books. Sometimes, when the wind blows, the house’s bones creak, prompting Agnes to see what’s outside. And then she locks the door.

Arranged nonchronologically in titled sections, “Sorry, Baby” opens in the present with Agnes eagerly expecting a visit from her close friend Lydie (an excellent Naomi Ackie). The two used to live together in the house when they were grad students at the same school where Agnes now teaches. Nothing particularly eventful occurs during Lydie’s visit, although everything that these two women say and do — their unforced ease, how they readily laugh together and exchange loving, knowing looks — adds detail and texture to the emerging story, as does the unexplained sight of them both tucked into Agnes’s bed when they’re sleeping.

It’s easy to like Agnes and Lydie, and want to fall into their little circle and, by extension, the movie. The performances are natural and nuanced; the characters attractive, with bright smiles, sharp minds and a tender, easy way of sharing space and quiet, a feeling of comfort that comes from a deep, shared history. Victor slips exposition into the realistic dialogue, but for the most part she doesn’t overexplain. Instead, she uses everyday chatter, glances, pauses and intonations to flesh out the characters and their relationships. When at one point Lydie asks — her face now still and serious, her voice briefly coloring with discreet emotion — if Agnes ever leaves the house, this seemingly simple question takes on great weight.