Just a few thoughts. If I Had Legs I’d Kick You
A woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
Were you expecting a review of The White Lotus or Daredevil: Born Again? Yeah, me too. But recently, the brain is not braining, and this one has waited long enough, anyway. And spoiler – it’s definitely worth your time, as Rose Byrne is brilliantly unhinged.
It might be a bit difficult to put If I Had Legs I’d Kick You into solely one category. It’s a chaotic maternal-meltdown, anxiety-driven drama with great comedic moments. As an A24 release, one cannot expect anything else but a feverish thrill ride. Her husband is away, and her daughter (Delaney Quinn) is hooked up to a beeping medical device. Linda (Rose Byrne) juggles her child’s treatment and getting her to the “next weight goal”, being forced into attending a support group, and handling her overbearing patients. There’s also this suspicious giant hole in her ceiling that seems to be growing while she’s forced to stay in a motel with her daughter – and the machine. Linda may be going out of her mind, but the director, Mary Bronstein, doesn’t even think of lending us a hand in her zero-oxygen film. Shot mostly in close-up, holding tight on Linda’s face and deliberately keeping the daughter out of frame, putting us inside the oppression apparently called motherhood with the walls closing in as Linda juggles more than she can handle, but everyone expects her to.
As a therapist, Linda should theoretically be well equipped to deal with everything, or at least – or rather primarily – with a high-maintenance, on-the-spectrum daughter who’s barely seen but often heard, constantly asking questions or panicking in the back seat. Hidden until the very end (when shown by Christopher Messina, a cinematographer who also worked on Safdie brothers’ Good Time), the child appears to embody her mother’s emotions – resentment towards her pragmatic absent husband (Christian Slater), deep sense of failure as a mother and looming breakdown on top of it all.
We meet Linda through a tight close-up of her as the camera stays there to a point of uncomfortableness. Claustrophobia starts crawling at us while an off-screen doctor (Bronstein herself) discusses care options for the daughter who eats partially through a feeding tube in her stomach (Linda finds it unnecessary). We lock in on Linda at the same moment her judgment as a mother comes into question. The second session we see is with her stone-faced therapist (Conan O’Brien), revealing a glimpse of her self-destructive tendencies. From there, we observe her going down the hall to her own patients and see how she does have the right language and emotional tools, yet she never adheres to the therapy-speak herself. We shouldn’t be so surprised. Between a husband berating her over the phone, a doctor thinking she’s a bad mother, her own therapist/colleague whose sessions seem to make things worse since Linda tends to challenge those trying to help her, her patients (an overwhelmed mom, vapid millennial, and a needy man-child) for which she, in fact, has little patience and a daughter who needs constant care, it’s actually impressive she managed to keep going for so long.
Self-care Linda practices in scarce moments for herself exclusively at night might seem questionable to some, but trapped in a cheap motel with a constantly beeping machine, you gotta do what you gotta do. In Linda’s case, it’s marijuana and multiple bottles of wine a night with a baby monitor on her side, so the machine sounds never leave her. But she also visits her apartment at those late hours to check on the hole in the ceiling, which seems to be growing, deepening and taking on unexpected (meta)physical properties. Maybe it's Linda’s lack of sleep or weed. Or the pressure and stress she’s under lashes out at last. Whatever that is, the Eraserhead-like lurid discomforts and nauseating thrill ride into motherhood make the ceiling hole turn into a cosmic void for us all.
“I’m one of those people who’s not supposed to be a mom” is one of the notions Linda wrestles with. When not for the close-ups, the stressful gut punch is implied by Byrne’s overall monumental performance, proving she’s been overlooked by Hollywood for far too long. Her fidgety body language and desperate expression with a twitching face made Linda seem like a blow could make her fall and shatter. We’re never allowed to morally consider whether she even deserved such hell. Pushed by circumstances to selfishness and short-tempered cruelty, Linda is greatly multidimensional and painfully lifelike, making it impossible not to feel for or truly dislike her. A magnificent performance that rightfully won Rose Byrne the Silver Bear for Best Lead Performance.
If you’re a parent and claim to have never thought to yourself, “It isn’t supposed to be like this”, you’re lying. I’m not a mother, not even sure I ever should be one, but I’ve seen, met, observed many and lived with one. “In society’s eyes, the worst thing a mother can do is fail at the Sisyphean trials of parenthood”, Siddhant Adlakha says in her review. “Perhaps this is something Linda has internalised”.
And if you’re reading this and think, “Jesus, I don’t want to watch it”, you’re wrong. It’s a full-frontal assault on the senses, and you’ll absolutely love it.
Watched at the 2025 Berlinale.