If I Had Legs I’d Kick You Is an Anxious and Surreal Portrait of Maternal Pressures

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“I’m one of those people who’s not supposed to be a mom,” anguishes Linda (Rose Byrne in a career-best performance) during one of her increasingly strained sessions with her therapist (an amusingly curt Conan O’Brien). A mental health professional herself, treating patients at the “Center for Psychological Arts” in Montauk, Linda encroaches closer and closer to a full-on mental break for the entirely of If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, only the second feature in nearly two decades from writer-director Mary Bronstein.

This internal conflict over her parental capabilities predominantly stems from her ailing young daughter (Delaney Quinn), who is battling an unnamed gastronomic illness that requires nutrients to be fed through a tube lodged in her tiny stomach. Although concerns over her daughter’s treatment dominate Linda’s life, the child’s name is never uttered and her visage is largely absent from the film, save for some shots of disembodied parts: legs dangling from a toilet seat, an ear listening to her mother’s lullaby, the gaping wound that tethers her to the tube. Even less is seen of Charlie, Linda’s husband, who works as a boat captain and whose main contribution to the household are increasingly dismissive phone calls to Linda. “Are you in your right mind?” He sardonically quips after his wife unleashes a torrent of tears over her mounting stressors.

If an absentee husband and chronically ill daughter weren’t enough to drive Linda to increase her secret nightly doses of wine and weed, her life begins to literally crumble around her. After another appointment with a hostile pediatric team (“shame and blame” seems to be the medical facility’s motto), Linda returns home with her daughter to find a deluge of water seeping from a crack in the master bedroom’s ceiling; plaster, concrete and insulation come crashing down, forcing the pair to relocate to a beachfront motel while the landlord-hired contractors slowly make repairs. Here, she meets a friendly long-term tenant named Jamie (a charismatic A$AP Rocky), who facilitates her purchase of hard drugs on the “dark web” and, though essentially a stranger, shows the most concern for Linda and her daughter’s well-being above anyone else.

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On top of this, Linda’s patients in If I Had Legs I’d Kick You also inch closer to crisis, particularly Caroline (Danielle Macdonald), a young mother who, clearly battling severe postpartum symptoms, is enveloped with constant dread. “Something very bad is happening,” she croaks as if on the verge of tears. As much as her obsession with murderous nannies and the worldly dangers she must “protect” her son, Riley, from are not rooted in reality, there is an eerie irrefutability to the statement, particularly as Linda’s own perception of reality gives way to surreal visions induced by severe stress.

If I Had Legs I’d Kick You is rife with chaos—a patient mysteriously vanishes, a rodent goes violently rogue, a tibia abruptly breaks through flesh—yet the film’s central fascination lies in the crushing call of the void. The hole in the apartment’s ceiling begins emitting strange phenomena, the child’s stoma begs for bizarre intervention, the pitch-black waves of the Atlantic at night possess a powerful allure. Tasked with keeping everyone afloat and maintaining her increasingly unkempt mental hygiene, Linda flirts with the idea of retreating into the abyss. “I just want someone to tell me what to do,” she blurts during a particularly one-sided therapy session.

Mothers aren’t supposed to be arrested by such feelings of sniveling helplessness; after all, the essential function of a nuclear household rests on their sustained labor, regardless of their own career prospects or hopes to pursue personal pleasures. Keeping this in mind, it makes sense that Linda feels utterly ill-equipped to deal with everything on her own, inviting thoughts of parental inadequacy to fester and eventually consume her. Many will compare Bronstein’s film with the de-fanged maternal musings of Nightbitch, but the palpable anxiety this film radiates is much more in line with Eraserhead: intelligent, moody and at times totally uncanny. There is also certainly a whiff of Daddy Longlegs here—after all, it’s produced by longtime collaborators Josh Safdie and Ronald Bronstein, the Safdie brothers’ faithful co-writer and the filmmaker’s husband.

Yet the film retains the droll humor on display in Yeast, Bronstein’s feature debut from 2008. Shot on era-appropriate Mini-DV and oft-lopped into the “mumblecore” genre, the film indulges in the conceited perspective of its 20-something protagonist (played by Bronstein; interestingly, Bryne’s character in If I Had Legs I’d Kick You sports some of the director’s own tattoos, perhaps alluding to autobiographical elements). While this new film is similarly cemented in a single perspective—undoubtedly why the child character is almost completely absent from the screen—Linda’s selfishness is almost radical due to her demanding mothering duties. However, the film is careful to caution that when confronted with abject loneliness, one can easily become accustomed to the company of their own suffering. As its title suggests, even if everyone in Linda’s life showed up to magically fix her problems, would her first instinct be to air her pent-up grievances as opposed to breathe a sigh of relief?

Director: Mary Bronstein
Writers: Mary Bronstein
Stars: Rose Byrne, Conan O’Brien, ASAP Rocky, Danielle Macdonald, Delaney Quinn
Release Date: January 24, 2024 (Sundance Film Festival)

Natalia Keogan is a freelance writer and editor with a concerted focus on independent film. Her interviews and criticism have appeared in Filmmaker Magazine, Reverse Shot, Backstage Magazine, SlashFilm, Blood Knife and Daily Grindhouse, among others. She lives in Queens, New York with her large orange cat. Find her on Twitter @nataliakeogan

If I Had Legs I’d Kick You Is an Anxious and Surreal Portrait of Maternal Pressures

Writer-director Mary Bronstein’s second feature—premiering 17 years after her lo-fi debut, Yeast—ditches a comedic slice of life sensibility for one that is startling and surreal.