If I Had Legs I’d Kick You Review: Rose Byrne Delivers Her Career-Best Performance in This Anxiety-Inducing Psychological Dramedy About Motherhood and Mental Health
Writer-director Mary Bronstein shows us what it’s like to suffer from anxiety as a busy parent in If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, featuring Rose Byrne in her career-best performance, where it will be a crime not to see her land a Best Actress nomination for next year’s Oscars. She is that parent named Linda, and despite working as a therapist, her own life is in shambles. Right from the onset, Bronstein thrusts us straight into exploring Linda’s anxiety-inducing state on the verge of a mental breakdown.
We see her endlessly overwhelmed by everything that’s been going on in her routine life, day and night. She has to take care of her daughter, where the latter suffering from a mysterious illness which requires Linda’s constant attention and support. Her husband (Christian Slater, who predominantly appeared in a voice-only performance) is away for work, and each time his phone calls talking to her end with all the blaming and arguing. Even at work, Linda’s mind seems to be wandering off elsewhere while sitting there listening to her patients’ problems.
One of her ways to numb the feelings that have been bugging her is booking a session with her colleague and fellow therapist, played by Conan O’Brien in a surprisingly dramatic turn. I figure this might be easily a miscasting problem, and yet, the fact that O’Brien being cast against type somehow works after all. The other way would be to ease her pain away by downing a bottle of wine.
But no matter how hard she tries to keep her sanity intact, the world seems to work in mysterious ways of testing her patience to the limit. Like when her apartment leaves a large, gaping hole after a burst pipe causes the ceiling to collapse, forcing her and her sick daughter to move into a motel for the time being. Bronstein cleverly mirrors Linda’s state of mind by shooting the movie in a palpable visual flair with the help of Christopher Messina’s evocative cinematography. There are lots of close-ups on Byrne, allowing the actress to bare it all by running the gamut of emotions like you’ve never seen her before.
Interestingly, the camera is so fixated on Linda as if it represents the never-ending problems that refuse to go away, to the point that Bronstein deliberately eschews the shots of Linda’s daughter. Strange as it may seem, such a creative decision is entirely justified by the movie’s intention of presenting the daughter as a manifestation of Linda’s constant anxious state. The child’s face being largely obscured, either showing her off-screen or only framed in partial shots, helps to accentuate Linda’s stressful scenario, while denying us the pressure of giving us a look at how sympathetic her daughter is. Instead, we mostly hear her frequently crying and whining and even at one point, making a big fuss over a pet hamster.
The movie may have been Rose Byrne’s show, but Bronstein manages to leave some room for other actors to shine. Apart from the aforementioned Conan O’Brien, A$AP Rocky equally deserves mention here in his charismatic supporting turn as the motel superintendent who tries to be friendly with Linda. If I Had Legs I’d Kick You is no doubt one of the best movies I have come across this year, where Bronstein has her unique way of capturing the relatable pressure of experiencing motherhood and mental health.
For someone like Rose Byrne’s Linda, it certainly hits home to see her juggling between her career, her responsibility as a mother taking care of a sick child, and her own sanity. And all these are subtly told in a mean-spirited comedy-drama form with none of the overly depressing and melodramatic excesses commonly associated with such a subject matter.
