If I Had Legs I’d Kick You (2025)
Directed by: Mary Bronstein
Premise: A mother (Rose Byrne) lives in a hotel with her ill daughter after a water pipe bursts in their home. She struggles to balance motherhood, work, and personal care.
What Works: If I Had Legs I’d Kick You is an impressive exercise in experiential filmmaking. This movie isn’t so much about plot as it is about character and emotion. Linda is a working mom caring for her seriously ill daughter. It’s not specified what’s wrong but the daughter has a feeding tube in her stomach and requires constant care. The film is a portrait of Linda’s emotional and physical exhaustion. Everything in If I Had Legs I’d Kick You works together to create that impression. The film is often shot in close ups with Linda’s face crowding the frame. Doctors chide Linda for her child’s lack of progress which she internalizes as proof of her failure as a mom. Their home is flooded and Linda is frustrated by the contractor’s slow progress. Linda’s husband travels for work and their phone calls are hostile, adding to the stress. She’s also a therapist and the sessions convey the emotional drain of dealing with other people’s problems. The stress compounds to become unmanageable. Rose Byrne plays Linda and it’s a raw and honest performance. Bryne is constantly on edge and although Linda is in a sympathetic position neither Byrne nor the filmmakers allow her to be an easy character. Linda is irascible and makes a bad situation worse with substance abuse and impulsive choices. The raw moments are interrupted by surreal sequences in which Linda has abstract visions. These might be supernatural moments of transcendence or indications that Linda’s sense of reality is cracking up. The editing is very effective in the way it juxtaposes images, creating disorienting transitions between scenes. As bleak as the movie is, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You also has a dark sense of humor. The film has notable supporting performance by A$AP Rocky as a fellow hotel tenant, Danielle Macdonald as one of Linda’s patients, and Conan O’Brien as a fellow therapist. Everyone brings a lot of reality to the movie and the characters have their own internal lives.
What Doesn’t: If I Had Legs I’d Kick You is not necessarily a pleasurable film to watch. This is a stress nightmare of a movie akin to Uncut Gems and Requiem for a Dream. Its unpleasantness is the point. The filmmakers intend to put us in this woman’s deteriorating mental state and they do so effectively. It succeeds as art if not entertainment. The one weak element of If I Had Legs I’d Kick You is the ending. The conflicts and characters come together, bringing the crisis to a peak, but then the movie stops. The filmmakers don’t put a pat bow on everything but the ending also feels incomplete.
Bottom Line: If I Had Legs I’d Kick You is an exceptional piece of filmmaking with one of Rose Byrne’s best performances. It may stumble in the end but this is an effective and masterfully crafted work of cinema.
Episode: #1074 (November 16, 2025)