The Horror of Being Needed: If I Had Legs I’d Kick You- Mary Bronstein (2025)

If I Had Legs I’d Kick You is the kind of film I simultaneously loved and would never watch again, a film that can most aptly be described as having a panic attack. Rose Byrne delivers a career defining performance as Linda, a psychotherapist struggling to manage her daughter’s unexplained illness, which requires her to have a tube in her stomach connected to a machine. When the ceiling of their home collapses, Linda and her daughter are forced to relocate to a run down motel, a dramatic event that sets the tone for the rest of the film.

From this point onwards, Linda’s domestic and personal life seem to follow suit, both literally and metaphorically collapsing around her, exacerbated by the absence of her husband, who is away on a business trip for the majority of the film. The 'cosmic hole' that develops in Linda’s ceiling throughout the film acts as a surrealist indicator for her mental state and the literal collapse of her domestic sphere, growing and refusing to be sealed throughout the film.

Director Mary Bronstein does not simply allow the audience to witness Linda’s psychological breakdown but makes us part of it firsthand. The anxiety I felt watching this mirrors Linda’s internal psyche, with every formal aspect of the film’s composition contributing to the feeling that the film itself is having a breakdown.

From the intensity of the close ups, to the suffocating heightened nature of the sound design, everything hits you like a truck. Right from the beginning, Byrne is held in an uncomfortably close shot for an extended take, forcing the audience into an almost unbearable proximity to a woman on the verge of a breakdown.

Her performance is raw and unflinching, capturing the subtleties of someone falling apart whilst desperately trying to keep herself together, as well as moments of complete desperation. Byrne's performance departs from the light hearted comedic roles she is perhaps best known for, but I think Bronstein cleverly plays with these expectations to heighten the audience's discomfort. The film is often genuinely funny, with its dark humour making Linda's increasingly absurd circumstances almost comical, yet the comedy never undermines the distress of her experience, but instead makes it feel more realistic, capturing the absurdity of everyday life and making it something that feels more unsettling.

Through these close ups, Linda is seen. This act of seeing and empathising is a simple thing which Bronstein encourages, yet it is something Linda herself desperately battles for throughout the film, particularly from the men in her life. She wants to be seen, heard and understood, but repeatedly finds herself dismissed by the people who should be listening to her. When she screams “Can you hear me?!” at her emotionally abusive therapist, played by Conan O’Brien, the question becomes more than an expression of her immediate frustration. He is someone literally paid to listen, yet he does not seem to care, nor does he truly try to understand. Similarly, Linda’s absent husband, played by Christian Slater, plays an important role in invalidating her experience. Whilst he enjoys his time away on a work trip, Linda is left to manage the seemingly endless responsibilities of caring for their daughter, with her husband only adding to her distress by his repeated criticisms. Like her daughter, he becomes another voice in Linda’s head, a constant reminder that she should be doing better, that she is failing as a mother. Linda is a woman drowning, and no one is there to throw her a float.

Women who become mothers are often expected to manage their responsibilities silently and with ease. If I Had Legs I’d Kick You challenges the societal rhetoric that all women are born with a natural maternal instinct, with Linda declaring that “I’m one of those people that wasn’t supposed to be a mum”. Meanwhile, the men in the film continue to exist as autonomous individuals, seemingly separated from the responsibilities of parenthood, which the film suggests fall almost entirely onto the mother. For example, Linda’s patient Caroline, a woman suffering with postpartum depression, played by Danielle Macdonald, abandons her newborn baby in Linda’s office, while her husband refuses to take time out of his working day to collect his own child. He is not even aware that his wife is unwell and seeing a psychotherapist, further highlighting the expectation that women should instinctively know how to manage motherhood, whilst men are able to remain largely detached.

Bronstein takes this further by transforming the labour of motherhood and caregiving into something resembling psychological horror. Linda’s daughter, played by Delaney Quinn, remains faceless until the final scene, which is the main cause of the distress she experiences. Yet, rather than allowing us to see the child, Bronstein presents her almost as a voice inside Linda’s head. By keeping her off screen, Bronstein draws our attention towards Linda, positioning us within the same headspace. Therefore, we begin to experience the daughter in a similar way to how Linda does. The sound design intentionally heightens her dialogue, making her an inescapable presence, constantly nagging, whining and demanding Linda’s attention. She becomes an exhausting reminder that Linda must take care of yet another pressing issue, transforming the everyday responsibilities of motherhood into something relentless and, at times, unbearable. Ironically, Linda’s work as a therapist reinforces this same dynamic. Even as she struggles to manage her own crisis, she is expected to absorb her overbearing patients’ problems, with little consideration for her as an individual, mirroring her experience in motherhood. Yet while Caroline too represents an added burden Linda has to deal with, both women are actually quite similar as they yearn for someone to understand and empathise. Linda seeks this understanding from Conan O’Brien’s character, whilst Caroline seeks it from Linda, yet neither is granted it. Caroline’s actions may initially seem selfish, but they also reflect the same desperation for someone to recognise her distress that Linda experiences.

The loss of identity to the role of the maternal caregiver is something Byrne’s character battles with throughout the film. Linda seems to exist in two capacities: when she is with her daughter, and when she attempts to seek a mere moment of freedom. The latter is something she can only really access at night, when she partakes in alcohol and drugs bought off the dark web with James, the motel’s superintendent, who is played by A$AP Rocky. Yet, she cannot escape her daughter, with the baby monitor she carries around acting as a continuous auditory motif that ties Linda to her child like a dog on a leash. It’s a constant reminder that she is never truly free from her responsibilities, even when she is physically separated from them.

Bronstein’s decision to place the audience entirely within Linda’s subjective psyche is what makes the film so effective By taking the perceived everyday responsibilities expected of a mother and pushing them to a hyperbolic degree, she transforms the labour of motherhood and caregiving into a psychological horror comedy. The film is uncomfortable to watch precisely because it refuses to give us any distance from Linda’s experience. Through its suffocating sound design, claustrophobic close ups and surrealist imagery, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You offers a critique of the trivialisation of maternal caregiving and the way this labour is taken for granted in society. It is a film that left me feeling exhausted, anxious and deeply uncomfortable, but that is precisely what makes it so effective. Bronstein does not simply tell us that motherhood can be suffocating, she makes us feel it.

Words by Sophie Chapman, she/her