‘If I Had Legs I’d Kick You’ Review: A Go-for-Broke Rose Byrne Proves Anxiety Is a Mother

“Mommy is stretchable,” claims the nameless and faceless daughter of Rose Byrne’s Linda at the outset of Mary Bronstein’s If I Had Legs I’d Kick You. Cinematographer Christopher Messina already captures the actress in a tight close-up from the first frame, and his camera pushes in as close as a single eyeball while she feverishly disputes her child’s characterization. It’s a dynamic established early on for the visual style as well as the narrative: The more Linda protests, the more claustrophobic she becomes.

Bronstein never takes her foot off the gas across this tense tale of a mother swirling in a vortex of burnout. The camera scarcely ever leaves Byrne’s face in an extended prologue that culminates in a ceiling collapsing into Linda’s apartment, flooding it and forcing her to shack up in a dingy motel with her daughter. Once the title card hits, the range of shots in Lucian Johnson’s editing arsenal begin to expand, but the film’s vise grip on us never loosens.

Even as its lens widens, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You remains relentlessly rooted in Linda’s subjectivity. Bronstein doesn’t need to rely on stylistic gimmickry to convey dread as her beleaguered protagonist battles against Murphy’s law while her husband is away for work during a crucial time in their daughter’s health battle to keep on weight. Finely calibrated technical filmmaking in full service of a go-for-broke performance by Byrne is enough to construct a cinematic ecosystem that feels like a constant panic attack.

For decades, Byrne has routinely been the best part of whatever project she’s in, though usually in a supporting capacity. Bronstein gives her the role of a lifetime here—the opportunity to employ the skills that she’s honed across many genres. As Linda, Byrne can leverage her chops as a gifted comedienne from Apatow-era comedy, a compelling dramatic actress during the latter-day golden age of television, and a genre specialist fluent in the affectations required by Blumhouse horror. Without any leg of this stool, the character could not stand.

Byrne anchors Linda as a believable, if often brutalizing, presence in a maelstrom of misfortune. The character might not be stretchable, but Byrne evinces an emotional and physical elasticity as Linda scrambles to respond to whatever and whoever threatens her hard-fought sense of stability. She can play as easily off Conan O’Brien as her laconic therapist as she can A$AP Rocky as the motel’s affable super. Byrne’s turn recalls Gena Rowlands at her nerviest, especially as the film mimics her character’s heart-pounding descent into perpetual despair.

The brilliance of Byrne’s meticulously wrought work comes into clearest focus in scenes at Linda’s workplace, where a sense of resolution feels within reach before it slips through her fingers again. As a therapist, Linda tends to many patients dealing with similar stressors that push people to the brink of their sanity. In such settings where she feels some semblance of control, Linda can remain calmly objective while she dispenses advice that she would be wise to heed. But these moments of empowerment prove illusory and temporary as Bronstein jarringly ejects viewers from a scene directly into the next crisis to which Linda must attend.

Linda makes for the gravitational center of the film, a position Bronstein begins to question as the character approaches a point of self-annihilation. It’s remarked in her office that patients all feel entitled to be the center of the universe. If I Had Legs I’d Kick You indulges and interrogates that mindset as it ponders what level of selfishness is tolerable from selfless caregivers. Bronstein’s conclusions are as pointed as they are provocative.

There’s a paradox powering this story. Bronstein must remain in complete control of the enterprise to give such an overwhelming sensation that Linda is close to careening off the rails. Her film is a tonal rollercoaster navigating wild swings with pinpoint precision—largely because she can count on Byrne to bring such specificity to whatever a scene demands of her.

The only bits that don’t quite land are the film’s almost Lynchian take on the hole in Linda’s ceiling. Bronstein cloaks these visual flourishes in an ambiguity that’s largely missing from the rest of the work. But these sequences when Linda seems on the verge of metaphysical revelation constitute a minor portion of the film. Besides, by the time any thinness of these interstitial moments of cosmic contemplation becomes apparent, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You already has another fire burning that Linda must race to put out on her journey toward oblivion.