In the opening scene of writer/director Mary Bronstein’s exquisitely executed second feature, “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You,” Linda (Rose Byrne) sits in a family doctor’s office as her daughter (Delaney Quinn) says she’s “stretchable.” Before she goes into her sadness, Linda tears up and changes the subject - instead electing to focus on how to cure her daughter’s illness (if there’s any cure at all).
A voiceover from Linda proclaims in the next scene that “time is a series of things to get through.” The film itself feels like a snowball picking up speed and gaining size while Linda’s character runs from it - and ultimately surrenders herself to the inevitable. Without a shoulder to cry on and no one to alleviate the overwhelming emotional pressure the film’s main character experiences, it truly feels like a tragedy with a slight comedic twist.
Linda is a mother who is trying her best to push the Earth up the hill daily - not without numerous impediments. Her husband, Charles (Christian Slater), is a faceless entity for most of “If I Had Legs,” mostly resigned to a voice that’s often argumentative over phone calls. In the phone interactions that the audience hears, he’s argumentative and unwilling to understand the burdens Linda is operating under. (mostly resigned to unrelenting selflessness).
For the most part, Linda’s daughter is also resigned to being a voice other than seeing her hands and feet. It’s an effective visual choice because our main character’s circumstances are so intense that the people she loves the most have been reduced to noise. Things fall apart rather immediately. It ranges from minor annoyances from a parking attendant who constantly gives Linda a hard time at the hospital appointments to the doctor who says her daughter’s illness is not her fault, yet implements hard and impossible deadlines for her daughter’s feeding tube removal.
There’s no doubt Byrne's character loves and cares for her daughter, but Linda’s everyday life, as depicted in this film, doesn’t relent to things being enjoyable. Bronstein examines the physical, mental, and societal consequences of a mother who has been stretched too thin. Often, motherhood is portrayed as an institution that requires sacrifice. Bronstein’s feature doesn’t pull punches or try to sugarcoat what’s going on with the perceived “reward” of patriarchal devotion. “If I Had Legs’s penchant to stay within the messiness is why the film sticks with you long after.
Troubles are on the surface, but not like the giant-sized hole a massive water leak causes in Linda’s bedroom. From that point on, she and her daughter are resigned to a hotel room where there is little solace for Byrne’s character other than a small bottle of wine and some junk food. However, “If I Had Legs” returns to that same hole as an almost horrific metaphor for guilt. At various points in the film, the ceiling manifests as a particular memory that consumes Linda. No matter how many times someone says, “it’s not your fault,” there are almost a thousand contradictions the world will give to make you feel the contrary. This goes double as a mother.
It’s in the way Byrne embodies this character, both physically and vocally, which really turns into a career-best performance. You will feel every morsel of exhaustion, understand the sarcastic tone of specific lines, and the desperation of need for somebody to tell her what direction to go in. Everything is very understandable outside the guise of what people feel motherhood should look like. Another plot point Bronstein introduces is that Linda is a psychiatrist. A woman named Caroline (Danielle Macdonald) comes to her as a new patient, a young mother of a newborn. Many of the anxieties Linda is experiencing are mirrored in Caroline, often crashing into her like a continual tidal wave.
Due to the confidentiality of the job and Linda’s own ongoing difficulties, she is unable to relate to Caroline. This comes to a head when Caroline suddenly abandons her baby. As a viewer, there’s an immediate adverse reaction (and bias) you feel towards this act. However, Bronstein presents the many reasons why this could happen with her main protagonist. In the one person Linda seeks help from, her co-worker/therapist (played by Conan O’Brien), he offers none. He’s standoffish. By the time a friend in the form of hotel worker James (A$AP Rocky) arrives, that eventually falls by the wayside due to Linda's weariness.
"If I Had Legs I Can Kick You" could be summed up as a personal purgatory. It's a dream of running out of a burning building, extending your hand for help, and somebody managing to smack it back down. The truth is, the measurement of the greatness of mothers comes far too often from the horrors they can tolerate rather than how we intend to make those haunted houses a little less cluttered.
This review is a part of Multipotentiality’s 2025 TIFF Coverage.
