Director Mary Bronstein’s disappointing new film, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, is a fascinating watch. Centered on a career-defining performance by Rose Byrne that earned her an Oscar nomination, the film is a dark treatise on motherhood, swirling in blame, shame and a growing sense of dread.
Byrne’s Linda is an exhausted and perpetually anxious mother, wife and therapist harboring guilt and resentment. She takes care of her seriously ill child, who is hardly ever seen on screen. Linda is not a woman who unravels, unravels – the pieces that remain are disintegrating before our eyes through a series of escalating horrific events.
Her life is literally falling apart: her daughter’s health is not improving, her work as a therapist is difficult and unfulfilling, her husband (Christian Slater) is away on business and barely interested. Then the ceiling of her apartment falls.
Byrne is magnetic, terrifyingly raw and unfiltered as a woman pushed to the edge. She is fiercely committed to her performance and has never been better on screen. It moves with emotional precision, careful and considered, without ever slipping into melodrama or historical clichés.
Throughout the film, Byrne appears in close-up – in all interactions, the camera is focused on her. In this way, the director brings the audience fully into Linda’s mind and point of view. Every unsympathetic dismissal (even by her own therapist, a brooding Conan O’Brien), every moment of blame, is keenly felt and unapologetically portrayed.
Her daughter Linda’s doctor (played by Bronstein) has an impatient harshness that exacerbates the anxiety. Linda’s daughter is about ten years old, and is portrayed mostly through off-screen audio: grating, persistent, and impossible to ignore. Her cries, fights, screams and the beeping of her medical equipment create an uncomfortable and urgent soundtrack, drawing viewers even further into Linda’s intense and stressful reality.
Even the welcome moments of levity are tinged with a darkness that limits their impact. Linda’s patients provide light relief, but an intense heaviness hangs in the air, particularly in disturbing scenes with Caroline (an excellent Danielle Macdonald). An anxious, needy and demanding patient, Caroline is also a struggling mother, like Linda.
An unfortunate incident with a hamster builds to dark mirth, only to thicken the laughter. Linda gets locked in a battle of wills with a motel receptionist (Ivy Wolk), whose workaday insistence on selling wine is too crazy – and leads to Linda’s unlikely hookup with a charming motel clerk, James (A$AP Rocky in excellent form).
This is an urgent, important and admirable cinematic portrayal of motherhood, but I can’t say I enjoyed watching it. Dealing with maternal anger and ambivalence without softening the edges is confronting and somewhat incendiary. But that may have been Bronstein’s directorial intent.
Modern cinema she’s become less interested in saccharine, idealized depictions of mothers and more concerned with their inner lives, messy as they may be. Recent movies like Night dog and Die My Love dispense with maternal sentimentality and tidy redemption, instead showing mothers as complex and imperfect human characters raising children.
Based on some of Bronstein’s real life experiences of caring for a sick child, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You shines a glaring and uncomfortable light on aspects of motherhood that are usually left in the shadows: the thankless drudgery, the loss of selfhood, and all the resentment and guilt they carry with them.
Linda drowns in despair and shame, unable to find help, empathy or even a break. Her experience of motherhood is painful and messy, and the film dares its audience to confront the strain of both caring for a sick child and fierce maternal attachment.
Like Linda’s depiction of life, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You is imperfect and at times overwhelmingly chaotic. At its core, this is a dark and disturbing film that will start conversations about the complexities of motherhood. Byrne’s relentless and towering central performance makes this a compelling and memorable watch, albeit a challenging one.
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