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“If I Had Legs I’d Kick You,” a distressing dark comedy by Mary Bronstein, functioning as both director and writer, stands as the freshest and certainly most thorough exploration of a theme gaining momentum in American film: maternity is grueling, and a mother enduring that torment should vocalize it, unconcerned with judgment. Marielle Heller’s “Nightbitch” (2024), adapted from Rachel Yoder’s book, presented a more conceptualized take on this point: it depicted an artist so depleted by life with her young child that she morphed into a wild dog each night—a near-supernatural element that, regardless of its ingenuity, felt somewhat weakened when adapted from the page to the screen. Maggie Gyllenhaal, as director, more sharply depicted maternal conflict in her 2021 rendering of Elena Ferrante’s “The Lost Daughter,” centered on a middle-aged teacher on a coastal vacation, contemplating her shortcomings as, in her words, “an unnatural mother.”
Bronstein’s movie—her initial offering following her directorial début, “Yeast” (2008)—offers its distinct iteration of this declaration. “I’m one of those individuals who isn’t suited to be a parent,” a character named Linda (Rose Byrne) bemoans. Her young daughter (Delaney Quinn) deals with a persistent digestive condition, and her spouse, a sea captain, is far at sea. Over a span of several challenging days, a tough situation intensifies due to disastrous complications. A massive gap manifests in the roof of Linda’s residence, drenching the space and pushing her and her daughter to seek shelter at a motel. Linda, employed as a therapist, must juggle her work with the inevitably extensive repairs, which stall entirely when a contractor faces a family crisis. (Such predicaments are abundant in this film.) Linda also accompanies her daughter to a facility for consistent treatments, seemingly without benefit. She is consistently reprimanded there, initially by an irritable parking employee (Mark Stolzenberg), and subsequently by a physician (Bronstein), who warns Linda of the consequences if her daughter doesn’t soon reach the intended weight of fifty pounds.
Bronstein, each phrase radiating sardonic hostility, intelligently placed herself as one of Linda’s numerous challengers. This forms a darkly humorous, self-aware aspect, almost as if she were confessing to, and simultaneously heightening, her manipulative methods from behind the scenes, as she propels Linda toward absurd dramatic peaks. Yet, Linda can manage those peaks, to some degree. Early at the clinic, her child, identifying the fundamental variation between her guardians, describes her father as inflexible but her mother as “stretchable”—a judgment that Linda rejects, clearly wounded, but which is supported by her every following action. A strength of the film lies in its impartial view that sees this characteristic as both virtue and fault. After all, it is Linda’s adaptability that allows her to laugh rather than despair over an almost-ruined dinner, just as her remarkable patience enables her to deal with a series of troublesome patients at her workplace, named the Center for Psychological Arts. (These characters are portrayed by Danielle Macdonald, Daniel Zolghadri, and Ella Beatty, among others.) Nevertheless, Linda’s flexibility can boomerang, for example when she gives in to her daughter’s constant demands and purchases a pet hamster—an unwise choice, resulting in grotesque yet thankfully short-lived outcomes.
Byrne, the actress, proves to be stretchable in the most positive way; her acting is an impressive feat of tragicomic versatility. Regardless of her current action—rolling her eyes, absently murmuring commands into her device, dragging herself down a hallway in a daze, or venting her annoyance in a suppressed shriek—she shows an exceptional skill in seeming both mentally exposed and physically charged by the incessant focus of the camera. (Christopher Messina, the cinematographer, filmed a substantial portion of the film in extreme close-up.) In some of Byrne’s more unforgettable theatrical roles—a wealthy, spoiled ringleader in “Bridesmaids” (2011), an autocratic Bulgarian arms trafficker in “Spy” (2015)—she embodied a natural comedic antagonist, a self-satisfied, overly competent foe to a clumsy, inept heroine. “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You” inverts this scheme with inspired creativity; here, Linda is the bungler, or so she is perceived by those around her.
Similar to “The Lost Daughter,” a shoreline exerts a strong allure. “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You” unfolds in Montauk, and the sea appears to have a near-gravitational impact on Linda’s mind, as if the ocean’s churning undertows mirror her inner state. Paralleling “Nightbitch,” Bronstein’s creation includes an aspect of nighttime fright: Linda doesn’t morph into a canine, but her inner demons seem fully unleashed as she roams the streets after dark. The differences between night and day are so distinct that, sometimes, her experiences gain an almost supernatural aura: during daylight hours, she appears sapped, confined, and nearly paralyzed by her routine. Yet, after sunset, while her daughter is asleep, she can steal away for a drink, a smoke, or something stronger. She aims to obtain the latter via a motel manager, James, with whom she builds a hilariously unpredictable, frequently contentious friendship. (James is acted by the musician A$AP Rocky, delivering his second standout performance of the year, following Spike Lee’s “Highest 2 Lowest.”) These are ephemeral joys, but they offer Linda a crucial reprieve. They allow her to assure herself, if only temporarily, that she still retains some sense of individual life.
When “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You” was initially screened earlier this year at the Sundance and Berlin International Film Festivals, its constant, frenetic rhythm prompted critics to draw parallels to Josh and Benny Safdie, whose productions, such as “Daddy Longlegs” (2009), “Good Time” (2017), and especially “Uncut Gems” (2019), offered similarly stressful viewing experiences. Such assessments made sense; Bronstein is married to filmmaker, editor, and actor Ronald Bronstein, who has been involved in the Safdies’ works in various capacities and functioned as a producer of “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You.” Though presuming familial impact from the Safdies is generally unwise, it’s difficult to dismiss here, particularly with a film keenly perceptive to the subtleties of marital exchanges.
From one moment to the next, “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You” can come across as so aggressively constructed, bordering on assaulting, that it takes reflection to realize it’s also a film marked by purposeful omissions and well-crafted absences. Linda’s daughter is never called by name, and she is often heard but rarely viewed. In Bronstein’s most adventurous formal move, the child’s face is deliberately kept from the camera, in every scene save one. Instead, the girl is divided into fragmented body parts: legs hanging from a toilet, or a stomach from which a feeding tube extends—an image underscoring her close dependence on Linda. At night, the girl is distilled to a collection of sounds: the various alerts and hums from a machine connected to her during sleep, or the murmurs and snores coming from the baby monitor that Linda carries on her nightly strolls. Nevertheless, when awake, Linda’s daughter is a voice, and a lively, energetic one at that, constantly laughing, chattering, demanding, and complaining intensely. The disguise of the daughter’s visage serves as a plain yet impactful visual of Bronstein’s primary theme: how those we cherish can deplete us to a point at which we stop perceiving them as individuals.
Another clearly absent person is Linda’s husband, Charles, portrayed by Christian Slater but, throughout the majority of the film, reduced to a voice at the other end of a telephone connection, expressing anger and defensiveness into Linda’s ear. Charles is hardly alone as a male provider who shows an unwarranted indifference toward his wife and child. When one patient, a new mother suffering from postnatal depression, acts impulsively and desperately, Linda is obliged to grapple with her own physically and emotionally aloof husband. It’s among the narrative’s most frustrating exchanges, and, within those moments, the story’s heightened subjectivity suddenly becomes strikingly perceptive and indicative of a larger social pattern: too many domineering male voices, and not enough loving male faces or helpful male bodies attached to those voices.
Some exceptions exist, in a way. James is one, despite his kind efforts to support Linda as an amateur handyman and reluctant babysitter, tending to misfire, generally affecting himself. At work, Linda seeks her own advice from a grumpy colleague down the corridor, portrayed in his first substantial acting venture by a brilliantly deadpan Conan O’Brien. While not a particularly sympathetic listener (another clever joke, considering O’Brien’s fame as an interviewer), he does impart worthwhile knowledge to Linda regarding the rigorous maintenance of boundaries—something she struggles with—and the need for action over dwelling on inaction. “Make a choice,” he advises a difficult client at one juncture. Though the advice isn’t explicitly aimed at Linda, she clearly internalizes it, especially when the moment arrives to make important strides in getting her and her daughter’s lives back on course.
In movies, a gap in a roof generally represents a threatening sign—a cause for shivers of fear, whether within a horror feature like “Dark Water” (2002) or a sinister dark comedy such as “A Different Man” (2024). “The Hole” (1998), by director Tsai Ming-liang, delivered a more playful twist on this concept, treating a structural flaw as an entry point to romantic opportunities. Bronstein imbues the symbol with her personal Lynchian tremors of dread, occasionally pointing the camera upward through the ceiling, as if it were a passage into the darkest depths of Linda’s mind. Ultimately, she explores those depths with a truly recuperative objective in view. By presenting Linda with dual visible scars—one in the roof, and another on her child’s body—the film proposes, through sly humor and keen optimism, that the resolutions for each issue could be one and the same. Within “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You,” motherhood isn’t simply a hell but a chasm—suggesting that it, too, can be sealed off for good. ♦
Sourse: newyorker.com
