17 years after her first function, writer-director Mary Bronstein makes her long-overdue return with If I Had Legs I would Kick You, an intense, darkly comedic psychodrama so assertively crafted, it feels prefer it needs to be saying the arrival of a daring new voice in filmmaking. In some methods, possibly it’s. That includes a god-level efficiency from Rose Byrne, If I Had Legs I would Kick You charts an overburdened New York therapist’s harrowing odyssey by means of coping with her kid’s unspecified sickness, an absentee husband, and more and more combative remedy classes together with her personal coworker.
After an impressively economical setup, during which Linda’s life is telegraphed as a breathless juggling routine, Bronstein introduces the ultimate straw: a large gap has torn open the ceiling of Linda’s residence, which is now flooding with water, presumably from a burst pipe. Whereas awaiting repairs and together with her husband out of city for work, Linda is compelled to relocate to a finances motel together with her younger daughter, who must be fed by means of a tube inserted in her abdomen each night time whereas she sleeps.
If that appears like so much for anyone particular person to cope with, that is as a result of it’s. You do not have to be a mother or father to establish with Byrne’s Linda, a lady who’s already at her absolute restrict when her ceiling caves in, as if she may presumably deal with One Extra Factor on high of all the pieces else. However that is the f**ked-up sort of humorous approach that life works: when you do not assume you’ll be able to tolerate one other nerve-racking occasion, that is exactly the second if you get a flat tire or your electrical energy will get reduce off for non-payment. Probably avoidable issues within the long-term, in case you hadn’t been so preoccupied with tending to all the pieces else.
- Launch Date
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October 10, 2025
- Runtime
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113 minutes
- Director
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Mary Bronstein
- Writers
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Mary Bronstein
- Producers
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Josh Safdie, Ronald Bronstein, Ryan Zacarias, Sara Murphy, Eli Bush
From the outset, Bronstein makes the audacious option to keep away from displaying Linda’s daughter (Delaney Quinn), credited solely as “Baby,” head-on. The digicam catches glimpses of her – a snatch of hair, her limbs excitedly flailing within the rearview mirror – however her face is at all times simply out of body. We’re forcibly held in Linda’s perspective and given no selection however to establish together with her expertise, to contemplate Linda as an individual separate from her id as a mom and spouse.
There is a pure impulse to guage Linda for ducking out of the motel each night time whereas her daughter sleeps so she will be able to take pleasure in just a few valuable moments of silence, dissociating with a joint and a bottle of wine whereas listening to music on her telephone. Although she dutifully carries a child monitor, you’ll be able to simply see why Linda is consistently crouched in a defensive posture, able to strike on the mere suggestion that she’s an irresponsible mom. Folks love to guage, and Linda is consistently battling a barrage of judgments: from her husband, her daughter’s physician, the snotty motel clerk (performed by the hilariously acerbic Ivy Wolk), and even a hospital parking attendant. Linda’s defensiveness has calcified to such a level {that a} well-meaning motel neighbor (a formidable A$AP Rocky) is an enemy earlier than he is even opened his mouth.
How private expertise defines a person’s actuality is a recurring theme, touched on in Linda’s classes together with her therapist and coworker, performed by an exasperated Conan O’Brien – a uncommon appearing credit score for the late-night host, and one which proves he has some untapped expertise. There is a fraught imbalance in his dynamic with Linda, who has developed some unrequited emotions for her therapist. This, like the need to have her emotions validated and a seemingly cussed resistance to simply accept affordable recommendation, is echoed in Linda’s classes together with her personal sufferers. It is troublesome to see purpose if you’re irrationally consumed by a gaping void.
Holes – within the ceiling, in her daughter’s abdomen – are one other recurring theme and tackle existential implications in Lynchian sequences. Linda has been subjugated to a relentless sequence of wants and calls for and duties so exhausting that the very factor that is pushed her over the sting involves resemble a cosmic escape hatch in a sure mild.
That Bronstein’s movie appears like a radical act in 2025 is concurrently soothing, within the cathartic sense, and alarming, within the cultural sense. We’re 14 years faraway from Lynne Ramsay’s We Want To Discuss About Kevin, which navigated an identical minefield of maternal psychology, albeit with very completely different goals. Ramsay’s movie is a provocative thesis on nature vs. nurture during which a mom grapples with postpartum resentment as her son grows right into a teen psychopath and ultimately commits a mass capturing, leaving each mom and viewer to surprise if stated resentment precipitated the tragedy. On the time, Ramsay’s movie and the Lionel Shriver novel it is based mostly on felt taboo, however the notion that moms ought to love their kids inherently and unconditionally, and {that a} mom at all times is aware of finest, contributes to a silencing of the identical ladies after they expertise psychological sickness.
14 years later, If I Had Legs I would Kick You feels simply as provocative as a result of nothing has meaningfully modified. Bronstein pointedly invokes Andrea Yates, the girl who drowned her 5 kids after her signs of postpartum despair and psychosis have been ignored by her husband – 24 years in the past. Yates recurs as Linda offers together with her affected person, Caroline (Danielle Macdonald), a youthful mom consumed by maternal nervousness round her toddler son. Caroline is terrified that one thing terrible will occur to her son, however she will be able to’t deliver herself to say what that one thing is as a result of it is too unthinkable, too forbidden to verbalize, even in a psychiatric setting.
Caroline cannot identify her nervousness for a similar purpose that Linda cannot deliver herself to ask for assist or outline what “assist” seems like. Girls are socialized to be self-sufficient maternal figures by a society that’s more and more detached to our ache, not to mention our opinions. Asking for assist not often appears like an possibility. We’re damned if we do, damned if we do not, and damned for needing something in any respect.
If I Had Legs I would Kick You will inevitably draw comparisons to Uncut Gems, the movie co-written by Bronstein’s husband and longtime Safdie brothers collaborator Ronald Bronstein. In oversimplified phrases, Mary Bronstein’s movie is Uncut Gems for millennial ladies on the verge, with Byrne delivering a efficiency on par with one of the best of Gena Rowlands – an icon of the sub-genre. Shot on movie with tight close-ups on Byrne’s pained face, Bronstein has delivered a worthy up to date entry in that very same sub-genre, an anxiety-fueled character examine that’s distinctively compelling and extremely cathartic.