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Last year’s toothless adaptation of Rachel Yoder’s Nightbitch, premiering then disappearing during fall festivals, tried to bring attention to the specific hell of motherhood. But valid points were clumsily underlined, highlighted and circled by a heavy hand, a missed opportunity that’s now been pushed even further in the shade by Mary Bronstein’s superior Sundance offering, the suitably aggressive-sounding If I Had Legs I’d Kick You.
It’s a far darker film (A24 vs Disney) but it focuses on a similarly fatigued mother, exhausted not just by the act of childcare but by the total lack of awareness and assistance afforded by those in her life. She’s played here by Rose Byrne, someone who has long deserved something more substantial to sink her teeth into, a gifted comic actor who has found herself a little lost in thankless franchises and little-watched Apple shows. She’s come upon an unlikely saviour in writer-director Bronstein, whose debut mumblecore comedy Yeast was released back in 2008 and who has now returned with a film that shares a similar anxious energy, yet for an older, more superficially mature crowd.
While Byrne’s Linda is a wife, mother and therapist, she often wishes she could just smoke weed and drink wine alone instead. The more we see of her life, it’s not hard to understand why. Her husband (Christian Slater) is never at home, on long work trips but in regular, grating contact, judgmentally yammering down the phone at a deafening volume. Her job involves speaking to patients she struggles to help while her actual therapist and colleague (Conan O’Brien) is losing patience with her. Then her daughter, shown off-screen yet heard via an almost constant whine, is suffering from a mystery illness that involves a refusal to eat. Then there’s that giant hole in her apartment, forcing her to move to a grotty motel cursed with a vile receptionist (Ivy Wolk) and blessed with a friendly stoner (a charismatic A$AP Rocky).
From the opening scenes, focused tightly on Byrne’s harangued face, Bronstein aims to keep us rattled and on the edge along with Linda. Produced by Josh Safdie and Bronstein’s husband and Safdie collaborator Ronald Bronstein, it carries that same sense of constant anxiety, something that can be effectively suffocating yet at times overly exhausting. Unlike Nightbitch, which softly tapped at the idea that having a child itself is an unending nightmare before essentially wrapping things up with a group hug, here Bronstein pushes far harder, framing motherhood as a frequently joyless and, for some, entirely ill-fitting life choice. One of Linda’s patients (Danielle Macdonald) talks of the all-consuming need to protect her baby yet also of the nothingness she sees when she looks at him, a blank, needy creature that demands so much but gives little in return. The total, maddening headache of Linda’s daughter – needy, nagging, impossible to please – is never offset by any real warmth, just the inescapable sense of failure. Bronstein’s script can be a little too vague and withholding at times but she gives Byrne a standout scene with her and O’Brien, as she confesses a truth most parents would be too scared to ever admit.
It’s a deliberately unpleasant endurance test of a movie (in her intro at Sundance, Bronstein called it “experiential”), a downward spiral that plays with flashes of surrealism, often dipping into moments of full horror, parts of which work more than others. It’s at times reminiscent of one of A24’s Sundance offerings from last year, the feverishly uncomfortable A Different Man, but it doesn’t possess the same off-putting and rather juvenile mean-spiritedness. Linda is a tough protagonist whose decisions can frustrate but the film keeps you on side, desperate for her to sleep the night through or just have someone offer to help. It might focus on the increased stress that being a mother brings but there’s a relatable plea for many who’ve felt alone and unsure, as Linda begs her therapist to please just tell her what to do. How do I fix this? What do I do with that? When will it get better?
What truly keeps us on side, though, is an absolutely sensational Byrne, forced headfirst through the wringer in the type of thrilling, all-in showcase she just hasn’t been given up until now. She reaches the upper levels of frustration and anger without falling back on easy histrionics, a whirlwind of nerves and sadness eager for someone to understand. It could lead to something of a career pivot, the kind of awards-worthy work that should inspire other risk-taking directors to work with her next.
In just under two hours with a plate filled a little too high, not everything here quite works as well as Byrne, but Bronstein clearly hasn’t made something to be liked, she’s made something to be experienced. I can’t say I’ll forget that experience easily.
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If I Had Legs I’d Kick You is screening at the Sundance film festival and will be released at a later date
