“If I Had Legs I’d Kick You” is an Oscar-nominated dramedy or tragic comedy, but I feel the urge to classify it as “realistic horror.” The realistic horror of the film thrives on suffocating the protagonist, not in a literal sense, but by brilliantly illuminating the ways responsibility can feel crushing. Through exploring themes of parenthood and escapism, the movie becomes a must-watch for those who seek to explore the struggles of child-rearing.
Directed and written by Mary Bronstein, the film follows Linda, a therapist played by Rose Byrne, who is not isolated in the conventional sense, but rendered helpless by a minimal income, an absent husband and an ailing child. There are no meaningful sources of “help,” and Linda finds herself feeling past capacity.
There are moments in the film where things just don’t let up. It’s like being trapped under a weighted blanket with your worst nightmare. The film stresses its audience out, in a good way.
Its portrayal of motherhood is particularly powerful and resonant. The child is unnamed. To the audience, the child can feel shrill and annoying at times. The daughter’s face is never shown, but she is held, reasoned with and carried out of a flooding home on camera, but she is very clearly an object of affection to the mother. Mothers find their children annoying; they are allowed to find their children annoying and still love them, and they would still be good mothers. The substantive work of motherhood requires energy that sometimes leaves no room for anything performative.
Is Linda a perfect mother? No. In addition to smoking, she drinks in ways that may indicate addiction, and attempts to purchase drugs from James — played by A$AP Rocky. She swipes the icing off the corner of a cake with her finger. Over the course of the movie, Linda becomes more reckless — truly, inexcusably reckless, and that is the ugly truth of what burnout does.
James adds a lightheartedness to the film that gives us some breathing room from the back to back tension. He feels like a real, random person that spawns when you’re going through a tough time in life and become strangely comfortable around.
The cinematography is atmospheric. It’s typical of an indie arthouse film, with colors that feel a bit like a moving graphic novel. Sound is used to great effect in the movie, whether the punctuating voices of children, the roar of white noise or voices over the phone and voicemail. It grounds you into realistic horror. It also shows how her husband, her landlord, her client’s husband and all these various voices are absent, just voices on a phone. The use of instrumental soundtracks is relatively minimal, kept only as couches for when more ambience is needed.
Rose Byrne is phenomenal as an actress. The trembling in her voice when she approaches the hostile parking attendant, the micro-expressions; judgment, tiredness, amusement — Byrne nails it all. A moment that encapsulates it all is her reaction to a hamster she bought being run over while her daughter is in the car. Here Byrne executes the urge to laugh, mixed with shock, mixed with “Did I just traumatize my child?”
Seeing Conan O’Brien as an older, squeamish and serious male therapist was hilarious.
The movie also inspires some interesting reflections on therapy. Therapy can feel like a joke.
Yes, you can intellectually know that you need to take care of yourself first, that breathing and mindfulness helps you think clearly. But what were these affirmations, coping strategies and frameworks, when you’re living in a motel, your daughter’s recovery is slower than it needs to be and everyone seems against you? Does therapy work when your problems are not just within your mind?
The film was made because it had something to say. Bronstein captures a lived experience that is so specific, and so important to share with the world. It is one of those rare instances when craft meets a story it can tackle. And the result is a must-watch.
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Shin Thant Hlaing is a freelance reporter for the Daily Lobo. She can be reached at culture@dailylobo.com or on X @dailylobo
