If I Had Legs I’d Kick You feels like a full blown assault as Mary Bronstein perfectly captures the complexity of motherhood all through a career-defining performance from Rose Byrne and nauseating sound design drown you in a never-ending state of anxiety. Bronstein perfectly captures how overwhelming the greatest joy of all time is.

Motherhood is essentially marketed as ‘the greatest joy in life,’ when for many women, in reality, it ends up being something quite isolating and difficult that you need to find ways to navigate. It quite often feels as if motherhood is a hard pill you need to swallow both happily and silently while you feel responsible for achieving everything and capable of achieving nothing. Towards the end of If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, Linda (Rose Byrne) through frustrated tears chokes out, “it isn’t supposed to be like this,” and it’s quite possibly the most accurate external embodiment of internal agonizing conversations many mothers have with themselves. We’re told this is the best thing that could ever happen to us yet it’s so impossibly hard. On screen, we see difficult mothers, but they’re quite often painted to just be evil instead of just women at their breaking point due to the actual stress of modern motherhood. It really is one battle after another, and Mary Bronstein perfectly captures how overwhelming the greatest joy of all time is.

If I Had Legs I’d Kick You isn’t entirely concerned with filling us in on specifics. We drop into Linda’s life on what feels like any minor inconvenience could be the straw to break the camel’s back. You think maybe it’s dropping the pizza because her young daughter, nameless and mostly faceless the entire film, will not stop asking the same two questions over and over. Or maybe it’s her daughter refusing to want to eat something as simple as pizza. Or her kid not wanting to go to the bathroom but then she does have to go to the bathroom after all (mothers really do know best). No, the ceiling of their apartment collapses on them leaving a giant hole in the middle of her home. The rest of the film follows as Linda’s life continues to unravel. Bronstein never treats anything with a different framing of stress, everything is bad and distressing. While each crisis has its own feeling of being part of a series of agonies Linda is going through, it also feels entirely like a single two-hour breakdown of one unbroken battle.  If I Had Legs I’d Kick You personifies the feeling of mothers feeling incapable of holding onto their personal agency; you can feel Linda desperate to feel heard in a world that she feels is using her as a punching bag.

No matter how many bottles of wine you finish, how much weed you smoke, how far you run, the responsibilities of motherhood are still there. You really cannot escape it and while the entire film to a non-parent may feel Linda is wanting nothing more than to escape it, at the end of it all, she loves her daughter. It’s the weight of the burden of being a mother, the loss of your sense of self and the feeling of it never being enough. You are never doing a good job at your work because you’re thinking of your child. You’re never doing enough at home because you’re burnt out from work and want to doom scroll for five minutes or go to the bathroom in peace. You never feel you’re doing enough for your child because you have to send this work email, or you want to wash your face. It is never enough and as much as you want to have another glass of wine or just shove your face full of peanut butter cups, you cannot turn off the insistent load of responsibilities, especially as a primary caregiver. It’s much less taboo to speak on the way motherhood feels so crushing and hard than it was ten or even five years ago, but the complexity of motherhood is still a difficult subject to discuss, especially with other mothers. Some don’t feel comfortable discussing just how hard it is and judge you. Even in the film, Caroline (Danielle Macdonald), one of Linda’s patients, tearfully asks her therapist once learning she also has a child, “you get it right?” and despite Linda entirely understanding the crushing feeling of on-set postpartum depression and anxiety, Linda does not fully acknowledge it and leaves Caroline to stew on her own. 

Bronstein’s direction is unnerving and perfectly places you in the psyche of Linda and all stressed out, overwhelmed mothers. She embraces the chaos and claustrophobia to lean into the high anxiety that to outsiders makes Linda maybe less sympathetic. In reality, she’s at her fucking breaking point and she truly cannot take another thing. Bronstein never gives Linda the space and she doesn’t give the audience an inch either. If I Had Legs I’d Kick You is the film incarnation of maternal distress and by not even giving us a wide shot, we never see a mother existing separately from her child. Her nameless daughter remains faceless almost the entire film yet there’s a comment about how she exactly resembles Linda; daughters are just extensions of their mothers, there’s no separation and in the film’s case, her daughter serves almost as a manifestation of Linda’s anxiety. Bronstein’s film is not about empowerment, it’s uncompromising of how mothers are consistently told to take care of themselves, yet we’re never given the space to. In a moment of desperation, Linda asks for help to only be compared to a lab rat who gnaws its own limbs off to survive. 

Byrne delivers a career-defining performance in what will go down in history as one of the best portrayals of a mother ever. Her expressions speak to the desire and fear in Linda as she navigates the all-consuming anxiety of motherhood and yearning to hold on to any semblance of personhood. You can feel Byrne desperate to break at points yet holding back. When Linda does break and scream, you can sense in her Byrne’s eyes she immediately feels mortified at how her outburst is being perceived. It’s not just the performance of a lifetime but a performance that will be treasured by mothers forever. The film is rounded out with an ensemble that both compliments and combats Byrne on every level (in the best way possible). Macdonald achieves being emotionally vulnerable while you’re annoyed and terrified for her; entirely perfect embodiment of the script and the point Bronstein’s making. A$SAP Rocky delivers yet another stellar performance and continues to prove he’s an actor on the rise. Conan O’Brien as Linda’s therapist is infuriating and his dry performance only adds to the frustration you feel as Linda begs him to just see her let alone hear her, hello, she’s paying him by the hour! The film entirely belongs to Byrne and while Linda may not be the most important part of her own life, at least the actress playing her is the star of her film. 

Motherhood is the greatest gift on earth. The love I feel for my daughter is overwhelming. When I have a bad day and she randomly tells me she loves me or asks to hold my hand, there’s no better remedy. However, motherhood is also the hardest experience of my life. It’s isolating, overwhelming, frustrating, and feels impossible to be good at everything. You always feel some area of your life is not getting enough attention and your child should be the one getting the focus yet no one else in your life understands that. If I Had Legs I’d Kick You captures that experience in what feels like a full blown assault from Bronstein. The writer/director flawlessly captures the complexity of motherhood all through a career-defining performance from Byrne and nauseating sound design that drown you in a never-ending state of anxiety.

Grade: A+

Oscar Prospects:
Likely: Best Lead Actress (Rose Byrne)
Should be Considered: Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, Best Sound, Best Film Editing, Best Cinematography

Where to Watch: In Select Theaters