by Cris Mora-Villa, Contributing Writer
I had the chance to see writer/director Mary Bronstein’s If I Had Legs I’d Kick You at the 61st Chicago International Film Festival with Bronstein in attendance. Prior to the film, she asked the audience to ruminate on two personal experiences: the worst thing that has ever happened to them in their life and the worst thing that had happened to them that day. I knew my answers right away and kept them in the back of my mind while watching the picture. Only after the credits did I return to them with a clear understanding of Bronstein’s intent behind her prompt. I forward these hypotheticals here precisely for that reason. Though I genuinely believe this is the kind of movie that can speak for itself without any qualifiers or caveats, Bronstein asking this of the audience is revealing for where she is coming from as a filmmaker.
Bronstein made her directorial debut with 2008’s Yeast. While I’ve yet to see that picture, I was stunned to see Benny and Josh Safdie in the cast list. I was aware of their sporadic acting forays throughout their careers, but their inclusion here is what appears to have sparked a long-running collaboration between them and Mary and Ronald Bronstein. Ronald (Mary’s spouse) would in the years that follow become the Safdie’s writing partner for several of their features. This would eventually lead to the formation of Central Pictures, Ronald and Josh Safdie’s production company which produced If I Had Legs I’d Kick You. Even without Benny’s formal involvement, the inclusion of Josh and Ronald as producers is tonally illuminating. The Safdies, and by extension Ronald, have developed a reputation for making grounded, anxiety-driven films that invite discomfort for the viewer. That feeling is definitely present in If I Had Legs I’d Kick You. Theoretically, their fingerprints are all over this project, but this movie fundamentally belongs to Mary Bronstein.
One can look to Funny Pages (2022) to see what the Safdies in the producing chair looks like. That film shares a similar tone as the rest of their filmography, but foundationally originates from a vastly different perspective because of the creative freedom bestowed to its director. In the case of Funny Pages, writer/director Owen Kline spotlights his familiarity with cartoons and comics strips to explore artistic egotism couched within a coming-of-age film. Bronstein brings a similar level of personhood to the screen in bearing forth a version of her own struggles through a very specifically calibrated tale. Despite that, I hesitate to call her film autobiographical, as that would feel like a miscategorization, but it does bare an emotional resonance befitting of a person’s lived experience. Like Kline, Bronstein was afforded the space to explore her ideas to the fullest extent. What follows is a sight to behold.
If I Had Legs I’d Kick You tells the story of Linda (Rose Byrne), an exasperated and emotionally isolated working mother pushed to the absolute breaking point as her life grows increasingly unstable. A premise that on paper is reminiscent of other movies that contend with the experience of motherhood. Tully and Nightbitch come to mind in this regard. Though all three films share a willingness to be playful, display an earnest sense of heart, and have great lead performances, I’m nonetheless left with a bittersweet aftertaste for the latter two. My issues have to do with the execution of how what is written on the page is translated to the screen. That cannot be said about If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, a film that honestly feels like the best possible version of itself.
The screenplays for all three films are appropriately helmed from a woman’s perspective in Diablo Cody, Marielle Heller, and Mary Bronstein. What textually separates Bronstein from Cody and Heller is the extent to which she is willing to utilize her avant-garde sensibilities to flesh out Linda’s plight, while tying it to her own personal experience. Heller and Cody attempt similar feats, but neither are handled with an especially deft hand that would ideally elevate the final product. Nightbitch uses body horror to root its premise of a woman’s transformation into a dog. Tully opts for a Shyamalan-esque narrative choice designed for the viewer to reinterpret the events of the movie. While these choices do thematically anchor their films, they also tie themselves to the narrative in negatively impactful ways. Bronstein leans away from these approaches and instead embraces shadowing the space Linda occupies with an obscure energy. It is difficult to describe how she does this so succinctly. All I can say is that what Bronstein produces is a feeling not of this world. Completely ethereal, but still human.
From its opening minutes, I locked onto what If I Had Legs I’d Kick You was putting down in establishing its frequency. Said frequency was decidedly Safdie-adjacent, but I sensed something else beyond the extended bouts of tension which I had expected. What I felt was a total absence of safety across all angles. This unguardedness naturally affects Linda most of all, but it does extend to the audience, and to a character in the film named Caroline (Danielle Macdonald). To imbue such an effect takes real bite, but Bronstein is committed to placing the audience in the same position Linda finds herself in. For as much as she destabilizes the viewing experience, her outwardly creative flourishes are handled with a soothing ease that evokes one of my favorite films from last year, A Different Man.
A visual signifier that informs this notion comes in the form of a gaping hole in the ceiling where Linda and her family reside. There is a despairing quality to this visual that I found both hypnotic and even tempered, which was also the case with A Different Man. This abstractly ties back into the film’s aforementioned ethereality, but it stands on its own terms as yet another foil that adds to Linda’s exorbitant stress. The hole also partially begets an ecological angle to the situations Linda finds herself in. While this notion originates from within Linda’s own family, all of the main settings seen in the film foster an ecosystem that Linda is confined to for the entirety of the runtime. These locations include the motel she and her daughter temporarily reside in, a local beach, her therapist’s office, her damaged apartment, and a healthcare facility. When combined, the claustrophobia becomes even more pronounced. Tying all these locations together is Linda herself, which brings up the movie’s greatest achievement in Byrne’s performance.
I suspected this might be the case before Bronstein said as much in a post-film Q & A, but Byrne’s portrayal of Linda reminded me of her performance in the Apple TV series Physical. That series unveiled a version of Byrne I had never seen before, so it’s easy to understand why Bronstein thought she would be perfect for Linda, given the similarities between the two characters. I’m ultimately glad she arrived at this casting choice, because it quite literally perfects the film. The character of Sheila Rubin in Physical is tasked with walking a fine line between tempered composure and a ravenous depravity which is appropriate for an anxiety-ridden mom in the suburbs. With Linda, the range is spread even further to encapsulate the character’s growing depression and a greater emphasis on Byrne’s comedic skillset. The end result is a mesmerizing feat that looks at Linda on the page and brings her to life with ferocious yet hollowing undertones. Unlike the casting of Conan O’Brien and A$AP Rocky (who excel in their roles through sheer force of personality), what Byrne is doing feels dangerous precisely because everything which surrounds Linda can’t help but to leave her drowning. A truly engrossing performance — one of the best of the decade.
If I’ve been a bit broad up to this point, that is an intentional choice. This is 100 percent the type of movie that should be seen with minimal knowledge of its actual contents. With that in mind, the actual core of the film can still be identified for what it has to say about the mental toll placed on mothers and the potentially fraught relationships to their children. Linda’s daughter (Delaney Quinn) comes into the film with a presence equal to, if not greater than, Linda’s for a very specific reason. On top of Bronstein’s creativity coming in clutch for further procuring my investment in many of Quinn’s scenes, what it says within the context of the narrative is such a powerful thing to think about when arriving at the film’s ending.
If I Had Legs I’d Kick You is the epitome of what I want out of contemporary films. There’s no such thing as being too personal in your work, but this one comes closer than most in testing that opinion.
Rating: Loved It
If I Had Legs I’d Kick You is currently playing in theaters
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