“If I Had Legs I’d Kick You” (2025) follows Linda (Rose Byrne) as she tries to deal with her daughter’s illness, manage her job, oversee repairs on her bedroom ceiling, and deal with the challenge of living in a motel in the meantime. Her husband, Charles (Christian Slater), is away for work and calls constantly. Before having kids, see this movie about a married single mom given the “Uncut Gems” (2019) treatment.
Byrne is a great actor who gives a physically rigorous performance. Byrne has always had an impressive range, and it is nice that she finally gets her flowers with “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You.” Linda is a woman who loves her daughter and has no control over anything that happens, which is bringing her to the brink of madness. Self-medicating with a mixture of wine and pot, she is running on autopilot at work. Having to operate a feeding machine attached to her daughter every night leaves Linda sleepless and without any time to herself. It is a perfect recipe for disaster. Is Linda a negligent mother or is she pushed to become one because of all the stressors in her life? Lack of sleep, being homeless and having to do drag as the soothing therapist, good mother, understanding wife, etc. are too exhausting, and Linda is beginning to let all the facades go.
A$AP Rocky, aka Mr. Rihanna, is a good actor because he does not bring a whiff of danger or red flags to the roll even considering his illicit activities. A lesser actor would have gotten the character wrong. As James, Linda’s motel neighbor, he has a genial nature and may be the most decent character in “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You.” Writer and director Mary Bronstein could have messed up his role and made him a love interest, a person who fixes everything, a new friend, a person who exacerbates Linda’s inability to function, but he is just a neighbor and barely a person to her. He is only as interesting to Linda proportionate to his usefulness to her. He is a good Samaritan who cares about the welfare of her kid but eventually joins a growing group of people who disapprove of Linda. For her failing to live up to their expectations He is the only one who keeps the bar fairly low.
Bronstein casts herself as Dr. Spring, the person at the head of the line who puts Linda in a double bind. She engages in therapy theater that exonerates mothers from feeling guilty about their children’s health while simultaneously making it clear that Linda is failing for not attending meetings or increasing her daughter’s weight. She is a vaguely threatening figure, and by casting herself in the role of leading condemnation figure, it could lead to curiosity about the inspiration for this story. Bronstein has a graduate degree in psychology and worked with sick and disabled children. Her own daughter became sick, and during that time, she had to leave New York and live in a motel in San Diego. It makes sense that after those experiences, she would make “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You,” a film that highlights the gaps in systems designed to care for people in crisis as empty, inadequate and punishing.
“If I Had Legs I’d Kick You” does a deft job of capturing the inherent quotidian misogyny in daily life and how people do not value women’s time, profession or words. Bronstein’s husband, Ronald, voice acts as the husband of one of Linda’s patients. In a film of awful people, he may be the worst. He is emblematic of all the worst examples of people unwilling to perform their self-appointed role and try to shift their burden on to Linda. This husband does not think of his wife or child as a part of his duties and sees Linda’s role as a therapist as a function that supersedes his obligations as a father and husband. His first duty is to his job. Also Linda’s gender determines her treatment. She is seen as a server, not a voice of authority. A fellow therapist (Conan O’Brien) gets one of her patients, Stephen (Daniel Zolghadri), to obey him in a way that she cannot. Stephen sees Linda as an object that he can own. O’Brien character can get his boundaries respected. When she says that she has a patient coming, he can ignore her and tell a red flag story.
Linda is not a likable person. “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You” shows how women perform niceness to get service, which further puts them in an energy deficit. It takes so much more effort for women to complete a task thus exacerbating quotidian stress on top of the crisis that Linda and her daughter are facing. If Linda is ineffective at handling problems, it is obvious why. The people that she pays do not care. People whom Linda employs or are supposed to serve her treat her differently as a woman who is supposed to obey and understand them. They are depicted as resenting serving her and do not want to answer to her. It is as if there is a conspiracy to fuck with her. The Landlord (Manu Narayan) reasonably wants to mourn his mother but did not do any work to repair the ceiling. The parking attendant (Mark Stolzenberg) hates her. Diana (Ivy Wolk) takes pleasure in finding excuses not to serve her wine at the motel and hides her viciousness behind policy.
To be fair, Linda is this way to a lesser extent with her patients, which is why she cannot tolerate what her therapist and Dr. Spring says. She knows that she is on automatic and not invested. She screams for solid directions, which she never gets, and settles for numbness. The hole in her ceiling is a vagina dentata figure that has the effect of a bad trip as if it is a portal into the past and reveals visions of the mystical cosmos and past trauma, which surprisingly is not the labor room. It is a horror note that does not quite work and references her fear of being a mother, a Shiva figure who can destroy and create. A terrific microcosm is a scene with a hamster when her daughter wants one then immediately repents once the hamster does not live according to her idyllic expectations. The hamster engages in Linda’s most secret wish fulfillment of being released from the obligation to love someone who is a source of difficulty and is not as lovable as advertised.
“If I Had Legs I’d Kick You” featured a gimmick that did not quite work. Bronstein does not show the daughter for most of the runtime, which symbolizes how she is so deep in the despair of the frustration of caring for her child that she cannot see her; however, there are numerous moments when Byrne’s face lights up when she is with her shrieking child, and no one else would find this child cute. Linda loves her child, but she is unintentionally abusive. She is ableist, just believes that positive thinking will solve everything and wants to take the tube out. Because she blames herself for everything, she also is immersed in magical thinking that she can fix the problem if she removes the tube. The movie does not reveal whether she is right. Her daughter is distressed that her mom thinks that she is better when she knows that she is not. When she finally sees her daughter, it does not solve the problem. There is something wrong with Linda, but because society cannot see Linda as an individual, the child will actually never be seen. She should have never seen the daughter. Also “Annette” (2021) called, and they want their schtick back.
It is not until the end of “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You” that Charles’ profession is revealed. It retroactively makes sense why Linda would be attracted to him, want her therapist to tell her what to do and encourages James’ curiosity. Linda suffers from internalized misogyny that probably stems from how she is treated. She does not believe in her ability to do things because of how people dismiss her. Her reluctance to join a group of women or to treat them like her servants instead of potential friends to commiserate with is not just a contempt for the lack of effectiveness of her profession, but because she literally does not see them as a valid option. Shout to Helen Hong as Eva giving massive side eye. Linda is only willing to extend herself to her patient, Caroline (Danielle Macdonald), because she relates to her, which is probably inappropriate.
Movies are empathy machines, and “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You” delivers a resounding immersive experience in one woman’s horrific experience of being a mother. If you work in family law, then you are already familiar with the phenomenon of the married single mom or any of these concepts, it is likely that this film will have a “been there, done that” feel. Unfortunately, the trailer shows too much so avoid it if you really want to see this movie. There are body horror elements, but it is only used to enhance the feeling of helplessness. It will be interesting to see how people with children react to this movie, and not just the artsy fartsy crowd.
