If I Had Legs I'd Kick You (15)

Beleaguered psychotherapist Linda shoulders the burden of caring for her sickly seven-year-old daughter while her husband Charles, a ship's captain, is away at sea. The child's mystery illness requires feeding by tube and the beeping of medical equipment keeps Linda awake at night. The pressure on Linda as sole decision-maker intensifies when a burst pipe in the family home causes the master bedroom ceiling to collapse and renders certain spaces uninhabitable.

LondonNet Film Review

If I Had Legs I’d Kick You (15) Film Review from LondonNet

Laughter is the bitterest medicine in writer-director Mary Bronstein’s unflinching comedy drama. If I Had Legs I’d Kick You left me feeling battered and bruised, clamouring to escape the emotional pressure-cooker of contemporary motherhood depicted on screen. It’s an intensely visceral experience, transferring the weight bearing down on the central character to us in the audience…

Beleaguered psychotherapist Linda (Rose Byrne) shoulders the burden of caring for her sickly seven-year-old daughter (Delaney Quinn), while her husband Charles (Christian Slater), a ship’s captain, is away at sea. The child’s mystery illness requires feeding by tube and the beeping of medical equipment keeps Linda awake at night. The pressure on Linda as sole decision-maker intensifies when a burst pipe in the family home causes the master bedroom ceiling to collapse and renders certain spaces uninhabitable. Mother and daughter hastily relocate to a nearby motel while workmen carry out repairs.

The motel’s superintendent, James (A$AP Rocky), lives in the unit next to Linda and offers to help her acquire marijuana and mood-boosting narcotics to take the edge off her stressful days as a perfect accompaniment to the bottles of wine she purchases from the front desk. In her addled and sleep-deprived state, Linda fails to provide adequate support to one of her neediest patients (Danielle Macdonald), who arrives for sessions with a baby carrier in tow. As Linda unravels, she rages against her situation to her therapist (Conan O’Brien). “I am one of those people who’s not supposed to be a mom,” she blurts. “This isn’t supposed to be what it’s like. This isn’t it, this can’t be it!”

If I Had Legs I’d Kick You is an unrelenting and, ultimately, suffocating portrait of parenthood. Byrne is deservedly Oscar-nominated as best actress in a leading role for her powerhouse performance. It’s a scintillating and utterly fearless portrayal of a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown, delivered without any semblance of self-consciousness or vanity. For almost the entire film, Linda’s daughter is heard but never fully seen – a hand glimpsed on the edge of a frame or a palpable presence in the back seat of a car – and this deliberate physical absence profoundly isolates the central character so her tirades could almost be her caterwauling into the void.

When she does deliver a primal scream into a pillow pressed tightly to her face, we empathise with the spiralling frustration. Small infractions – an argument with the motel’s front desk clerk (Ivy Wolk) about licensing laws – magnify into cataclysmic meltdowns. After nearly two hours of torment, I felt genuine relief to leave the cinema and draw breath.

– Jo Planter