IF I HAD LEGS I'D KICK YOU

THREE STARS Linda's world is buckling, and neither her child, husband, therapist, doctor nor apartment are helping.

DRAMA US English #IFIHADLEGS Starring Rose Byrne, Conan O'Brien

There’s no denying the impact of IF I HAD LEGS I’D KICK YOU, Mary Bronstein’s grim, claustrophobic portrait of a mother unravelling. Whether that impact feels worthwhile will depend on your tolerance for discomfort. Starring Rose Byrne in a performance as raw as it is punishing, this is a film designed less to entertain than to test; its characters, its audience, and perhaps its own limits.

Byrne plays Linda, a mother consumed by the day-to-day care of her chronically ill daughter. What begins as a weary study of routine domestic strain soon slips into something more unnerving. Her permanently off-screen and very needy child is weeks away from surgery, a situation made more difficult when their apartment ceiling collapses, forcing them to into a dodgy motel. Linda’s absent, off-screen husband tries to help but only succeeds in dialling up the tension. 

For the sake of her daughter, Linda has to pull it all together, something her paediatrician and therapist both think unlikely. They would since they’re both colleagues and working from the same office. Yes, irony of ironies, Linda is also a psychiatrist. By the time husband - cameo alert! - finally returns home to help, it’s all too little, too late.

Through Christopher Messina’s invasive close-ups, we watch Linda’s mental health erode in real time with small hesitations, faltering speech, the visible confusion of a woman who can’t summon the energy to make a simple appointment, let alone hold herself together.

Byrne is remarkable in a non-showy way. Her work here is brittle and jittery, grounded in a believable exhaustion somewhere between the unhinged and insane. She channels anxiety and isolation while offering flashes of humour before collapsing back into frustration or despair. It’s a performance that feels lived-in, but also leaves us feeling wrung out.

Bronstein matches that volatility with direction that’s equally uncompromising. Her tone and pacing is deliberate, yet this same commitment is what makes the film so draining.  IF I HAD LEGS eventually buckles under its own intensity, edging toward shrillness and heavy-handed, nightmarish symbolism but Bronstein isn’t one for stopping. Before long the audience is feeling as depleted as Linda and while that may be intentional, it raises a fair question: to what end?

For all its integrity and insight, there’s a limit to how much empathy can be wrung the experience. Especially once things tip into body-horror (tube removal anyone?), an escalating disaster that her stunt-husband can’t save them from. Still, there’s no denying the courage here. Byrne’s performance is extraordinary, Bronstein’s vision clear. Yet IF I HAD LEGS I’D KICK YOU is not a film to enjoy so much as one to survive. It is certainly burrows under your skin and stays there, probably longer than you’d like.

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