Rose Byrne has been acting since she was 15, but it wasn’t until If I Had Legs I’d Kick You that some people started noticing how good she is – no matter how much money movies like Bridesmaids or Insidious make, it takes a “serious” movie to unlock some people’s critical reward system.
But she is good in this. And she has to be, because this entire exercise in performative neurosis revolves around her. In fact the camera is on her so much that almost no one else features, and we only get to see her daughter – a bone of some contention throughout – right at the end. Which is how (once you get there you will realise) it must be. I will say no more.
Another interesting reveal comes at about a third of the way in, when it’s divulged that Byrne’s character, Linda, is actually a therapist. A marmalade dropper, as they say (semi-jokingly) in the UK.
Because up to this point this appears to be the story of a woman with no control over her life who is at the fat end of a nasty wedge. Bad things keep happening to Linda (Byrne). Her daughter is a whiny, demanding nightmare – there is talk of anorexia and feeding tubes are mentioned. Linda is forced to move out of her apartment by a massive water leak. Her husband, away on business, is no use at all and invariably shouts at her when she phones for support. The builders, when they eventually turn up, turn what should an inconvenience into an ordeal. One of Linda’s clients appears to fancy her. The list goes on and on, and when Linda turns to simple comforts for solace – booze, peanut butter cups – even they seem to conspire against her.
It’s a bit of a gimmick, the way the camera holds its focus on Byrne almost the entire time. But other people do feature – the voice of Christian Slater as the absent husband. A$AP Rocky as a genial front-of-house guy at the hotel. Talk show host Conan O’Brien as Linda’s co-worker and fellow therapist, a highly unsympathetic shoulder to try and cry on. Writer/director Mary Bronstein herself appears in front of camera as the officious therapist in charge of Linda’s daughter’s recovery. And there’s a small but key role for Danielle Macdonald as a patient so neurotic she’s afraid of everything.
Neurosis is what it’s about, and the demands of motherhood, and it’s a comedy of sorts, though there are no actual laughs. Instead Bronstein gets a few hoarse croaks out of the psychological trials of Linda, as if this were a retooling Kafka for the 21st century. Kafka apparently used to laugh out loud while writing his gloomy stories about people turning into beetles or being menaced by shadowy goons. Bronstein may have chuckled a few times while she wrote hers too.
Things almost take a sharp turn into horror or sci-fi at one point, when mysterious lights start winking out of the hole in Linda’s apartment ceiling, which also starts emitting a disgusting gloopy ooze. Maybe Linda’s taken some psychoactive substance and is having a bad trip.
I’ve not seen Bronstein’s only other featured, Yeast, but it co-starred Greta Gerwig and had support roles for the Safdie brothers, which is not nothing. It was apparently also a portrait of a woman on the verge of something, and was populated with characters it’s hard to like. Are there any likeable characters in the quietly excellent If I Had Legs I’d Kick You? I don’t think there are. And what’s that title about anyway?
If I Had Legs I’d Kick You – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2026
