‘If I Had Legs I’d Kick You’ Review: A Tense Blend of Trauma and Motherhood

As an adult man with zero children, I can admit that I will never fully understand director Mary Bronstein’s unnerving and psychologically traumatizing If I Had Legs I’d Kick You. Rose Byrne delivers an awards-worthy and career best performance as a mom who has been stretched well beyond her limits by everyone around her as she spirals out of control struggling to take care of her ill daughter alone. The film is an intense and heartbreaking tale of motherhood, and for many mom’s I expect it’s a voice they can very much relate to in some capacity. Despite being neither a woman nor a parent, I could still sympathize with Byrne’s character and the absolute horrors she has to endure. It’s unsettling and traumatic and even a bit mysterious. If I Had Legs I’d Kick You has a lot to say on motherhood, and while not all of Bronstein’s ideas stick their landing, the film will without a doubt leave you a nervous wreck.

Linda (Rose Byrne) has been taking care of her sick daughter who is recovering from a mysterious illness that requires her to have a feeding tube implanted in her stomach. She needs to eat real food and gain a healthy amount of weight before the tube can be removed, but the daughter has grown accustomed to her nightly IV bag of nutrients and mostly refuses to eat, putting more pressure on Linda to take better care of her. Her husband is away on a two-month work trip so he is absent, meanwhile those closest to her yell advice in her ear with no real offers of actual help. To top everything off, her apartment’s bedroom ceiling collapses and forces her and her daughter to check into a dingy motel room while they wait for it to be repaired. Linda faces one battle after another as she struggles to just stay afloat, and with no end in sight, she physically and mentally unravels until there’s nothing left.

At it’s core, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You is a psychological horror film. Linda is at her wits ends and it’s easy to see why. Her ill daughter is struggling to get better, her home literally has a hole in it, and no one in her life is helping other than telling her to “do better.” Rose Byrne is nothing short of amazing as the tired and burnt out Linda. She’s not a bad mom, either, even if that’s probably what everyone around her thinks based on her appearance and actions. They only see a single slice of her, though. Like how she argues with the parking attendant at the medical clinic or how her inattentive therapist, played by Conan O’Brien, seemingly berates her for complaining to him rather than try and help her. Her building frustration is evident, and she finds brief moments of solitude at the bottom of a wine bottle and a smoke while her daughter sleeps. Linda’s life doesn’t improve, though. The hole she’s found herself in only gets deeper and deeper, and anything she does only seems to make her situation worse.

Mary Bronstein makes some interesting directorial choices in the film as well. The daughter’s face is never shown, instead focusing solely on Linda. We hear her voice and she her body but her face is always obscured or the camera cuts away. There is a sharp focus on Linda; this is her story afterall. The camera choices does make you question whether or not there is something deeper to the story like if her daughter has passed and the lingering trauma is causing Linda to imagine her still there. I will just say now that there are no twists. There are no big surprises that turn the film upside down, even if there are moments that make it seem like that’s where it may be heading. The hole in the apartment ceiling is another such example. There are times where it seems like there is something more going on, whether it’s imaginary, a monster, or even aliens at one point. Bronstein frames the film using some peculiar imagery as she shows Linda’s descent into madness from all the stress she’s experiencing. And in the end, it’s not aliens or some metaphorical monster that’s responsible for it all. No, it’s the people around her and the fact that she doesn’t have a support system that fail her.

If I Had Legs I’d Kick You is one of those films you walk out of the theater wondering what  you just watched. The more you sit with it, the better understanding you have of it, however. Mary Bronstein doesn’t sugarcoat the idea of motherhood and uses it to create a tense and stressful atmosphere. As someone without kids, it’s a reminder of why I have no plans to have any in the immediate future. And for those who do or are thinking about having them, I imagine it’ll be all the more terrifying.