Writer-director Mary Bronstein‘s latest feature takes audiences on a tense journey of motherhood that almost never lets up.
If I Had Legs I’d Kick You stars Rose Byrne as Linda, a mom attempting to find a treatment for her daughter’s mysterious illness while dealing with an absentee husband, a missing therapy patient and a giant hole in her ceiling that keeps getting bigger.
The film immediately builds tension with a closeup of Linda in a family therapy session with her daughter (Delaney Quinn), who emphasizes that “Mommy is stretchy,” unlike Daddy, whose word is final. Although Linda pushes back, the therapist calls BS, and the mom continues on a downward spiral of shame and guilt.
Setting the tone, the rest of the movie mostly consists of closeups and strategically composed shots to emphasize her deteriorating mental state. As the hole in the ceiling gets bigger, it represents the crushing weight of the world hovering over her.
And while Byrne has plenty of closeups, the tension is only compounded by the characters whose faces are never seen, including her daughter, who is in constant panic mode, and her husband (Christian Slater), who is only heard through the phone while he chastises her parenting from afar.
While the stress builds on the mom, staying with her daughter in a motel and monitoring the child’s medical machine at night, she unwittingly takes part in a cycle of apathy that ultimately affects the faceless child’s well-being to potentially disastrous measures.
As a therapist, her sessions with one patient (Danielle Macdonald) mirror her sessions with her own therapist — played by Conan O’Brien in a surprising dramatic turn, with an appropriate dash of his famous wit — as both women struggle to feel heard under the weight of motherhood and other stressors that come with womanhood.
Although hardly the touchy-feely film you’d go see on Mother’s Day, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You will make you want to call your mom and check in — like, genuinely check on her.
Marking Bronstein’s long-gestating sophomore feature after 2008’s Yeast, the movie is her first project to receive outside backing after self-funding several indie projects. It was filmed in Montauk during the Hollywood strikes with a SAG-AFTRA interim agreement.
Producers are Sara Murphy, Ryan Zacarias, Ronald Bronstein, Josh Safdie, Eli Bush and Richie Doyle.
Title: If I Had Legs I’d Kick You
Section: Sundance (Premieres)
Distributor: A24
Director-screenwriter: Mary Bronstein
Cast: Rose Byrne, A$AP Rocky, Conan O’Brien, Danielle Macdonald, Ivy Wolk, Delaney Quinn, Daniel Zolghadri, Delaney Quinn
Running time: 1 hr, 533 min
