A gear shift from her mumblecore beginnings, writer and director Mary Bronstein has joined forces with the team behind the Safdie productions for her latest feature If I Had Legs I’d Kick You. An anxiety-horror of sorts, the plot follows psychotherapist Linda (Rose Byrne) whose life takes a turn when her ceiling caves in from a flood in the apartment above. With her husband out of town on a work trip, she and her sick daughter (Delaney Quinn) move into a shabby motel, and things go from bad to worse when her vulnerable patient Caroline (Danielle Macdonald) goes missing.
Due to the invasive use of extreme-close-ups, a handheld camera overwhelms Linda’s expressive face throughout to craft a sense of panic as her problems mount up. Combined with alarming sound design and scuzzy DIY-style cinematography, there’s a frantic energy to the narrative; interestingly the film decides to barely show us the protagonist’s daughter, who is suffering from a mysterious illness. Instead, the child is an incessant noise and presence just outside the frame but very much in Linda’s mental headspace, never letting up even when things are crashing down, sometimes quite literally, all around her.
In recent years, we’ve seen Rose Byrne portray a struggling mother battling body image demons in 1980s-set series Physical. In this, we see her shove junk food in her mouth and reaching for the nearest bottle of wine at any given opportunity. It’s a similar but no less effective performance, searching for escapism from a reality that is becoming far too much to handle. She’s joined by a strange mix of actors in the supporting cast; A$AP Rocky as a motel worker, Conan O’Brien as fellow therapist, and Danielle Macdonald as another woman in the midst of a mental health crisis. They all contribute to Linda’s chaotic journey on the hot mess express, but Byrne ultimately carries the material.
With her sophomore effort in the director’s chair, Mary Bronstein presents an uncomfortable and exhausting picture of the vicious cycle of parenting. Elevated by Rose Byrne’s visceral, nerve-inducing central turn, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You could have a hand in reducing future populations with its unrelenting depiction of modern-day motherhood.
Cinema Perspective 