If I Had Legs I’d Kick You

Bluesky

We’ve all heard parenting can be a nightmare, but the level of anxiety and dread has rarely been so high as in Mary Bronstein’s If I Had Legs I’d Kick You. Darkly comedic in the way you laugh when you realise you've stepped on a landmine, the film is a sustained alcohol-fuelled fever dream of insecurity, insomnia and impotency in the face of disaster. One of the bigger buzz films going into the 2025 Sundance Film Festival, it perhaps hit audiences with heavier feelings than expected – think the sustained anxiety of Uncut Gems folded into nightmare logic – but proves a worthwhile ride for those who can weather the storm.

Rose Byrne anchors the whole damn thing with a performance that gives the sense of wobbling for eternity on a tightrope without ever quite falling off. She plays Linda, mother to a sick daughter with an extremely serious but never properly explained disease. At its most mundane it could be starvation through picky eating, but we shouldn’t necessarily rule out cancer.

Byrne carries Linda with a heap of guilt supplemented with self-defensiveness, and these factors combine to fuel self-destructive behavior. She has to take care of everything by herself, while doctors scold her for not successfully getting her daughter on the right track. The only thing that gives her any reprieve is copious amounts of wine.

Much of the cinematography is framed tightly, focused on Linda. Specifically, we don’t see the daughter beyond the occasional limb, though we hear her. The disconcerting feeling created by the shooting style is akin to listening to an unreliable narrator. We can tell that our anti-heroine is in a world, but it’s hard to be certain whether or not this world actually exists. While the daughter’s (Delaney Quinn) lack of a visual presence is due to composition choices, Linda’s husband (Christian Slater) isn’t seen because he is away on an important business trip, leaving Linda to take care of the child while also working (I won’t say her job because the reveal is too good) and dealing with the apartment.

About that apartment – there’s a giant hole in the ceiling. Like a real big fucking hole, with water flooding out of it. And it doesn’t seem like the building manager is in any hurry to get it fixed. But while waiting for repairs, Linda holes up in a motel with all her daughter’s medical gear, and continues to spiral.

Unable to sleep, she spend her nights walking the grounds while drinking straight from a bottle of wine, sitting on benches with a baby monitor in hand in case her daughter wakes up. The motel superintendent, played by rapper ASAP Rocky, becomes a sort of almost-friend – at the very least an employee who’s less hostile when Linda tries to buy a bottle of wine near the cut-off time. But even that friendliness radiates a potentially sinister quality, if only in Linda’s perception.

But that interaction is sunny compared to that of Linda and her exasperated therapist, played by Conan O’Brien, who clearly has disdain for his patient. Byrne and O’Brien are both best known for being funny, and still get laughs even when their characters are struggling through clear emotional distress, provoking each other and pushing inappropriate buttons.

Constantly being judged, and often not undeservedly, the most amazing thing about Linda is how she never quite loses everything. And while no one would call time spent with this woman a joy, Byrne makes it continuously compelling.