Being a mother is probably one of the most difficult jobs in the world. It’s physically and psychologically draining as the stresses of being a mother never stop. And it’s a job that requires a “positive” attitude 24/7. It’s a job that causes many women to break. Mary Bronstein’s If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, is another iteration of what it means to be a mother today. However, instead of being all shiny and glossy, this film is on crack.
Linda (Rose Byrne) life is beginning to fall apart. After a water leak, she is forced to live in a hotel with her daughter who is battling a mysterious illness. With her husband overseas, her therapist becoming more hostile, a missing patient, and the hospital becoming more strict regarding Linda’s daughters treatment, Linda’s begins to unravel into a sleepless delirium filled with anxiety, alcohol and sheer panic.
From its very first frame, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You drops you into the world that Linda lives in. Where we are not just following her around, but trapped in her relentless life. The camera clings to her like a shadow, capturing a level of intimacy that feels suffocatingly tight as the walls around her begin to close in on her. The editing is jagged and breathless, just like Linda’s fractured attention as she tries desperately to keep pace with the relentless churn of her existence. Scrambling to find a balance between her job, her clients, her high-maintenance child, her fractured relationship with her husband, and the giant hole in her roof as she is forced to live in a hotel. Every miniscule sound is deafening as her environment is conspiring to remind her that peace is a luxury she can’t afford. It’s a cinematic panic attack on steroids. Linda is struggling to keep it together and the audience gets caught up in her exhaustion and her obligations to everyone around her. It’s a portrait of a woman drowning from the weight of life and you feel every breath and heartbeat of it.
It is an unfiltered, gut-wrenching state to exist in and Rose Byrne makes you feel every ounce of it with her finest performance of her career. With just a glance, a quiver of her breath, or the pool of sweat collecting on her forehead, she conveyed the sheer magnitude of Linda’s unraveling. Everything in her life, ranging from her exhaustion, her guilt and the relentless demand of mother, is dragging down into a deep, visceral pit of depression. A tour de force of maternal fury that threatens to burst at any moment. As she begins to spiral into a hazy delirium where weed and alcohol are her only comforts. It’s a performance that is the embodiment of what it means to be consumed from the inside out.
At its heart, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, is an unflinching cinematic experience of the modern realities of motherhood, specifically the experiences of “single” mothers raising a special needs child. It’s a relentlessly stressful experience that makes you feel like you are drowning alongside Linda. Every scene feels like a jolt of anxiety into your nervous system. Yet beneath that anxiety, it delivers a poignant and empathetic portrait of a mother unraveling under impossible pressure. While she is not the best mother in the world and the film never excuses her bad choices, you understand her pain. And in that space between judgement and compassion, the films delivers something deeply human.
My Rating: A-
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