Raising and caring for children is not for the faint of heart, a truth evident even to those who aren’t mothers. Why do they cry ceaselessly? Why won’t they yield to logic and reason, like typical individuals? Why did I have them, and is it too late to return them? Some mothers will never admit to these feelings, but that doesn’t mean they haven’t experienced them. Motherhood is arguably the most revered role in human society. What woman would ever want to confess she’s failing at it?
Writer-director Mary Bronstein’s abrasive black comedy If I Had Legs I’d Kick You is an unfiltered cinematic outburst, a nightmarish vision fueled by all the anxieties that mothers prefer not to voice. stars as Linda, a Montauk mother and therapist striving to keep things together while her husband, a cruise-ship captain, is away at sea. Her main struggle is caring for their young daughter, who is afflicted with a mysterious and stubborn illness: she refuses to eat, receiving nourishment solely via a feeding tube. We don’t see the child’s face until the film’s conclusion (she’s played by Delaney Quinn); she is known only as a whining, demanding off-screen presence who seems to consume every bit of her . She shrieks about not wanting cheese on her pizza; she insists on a hamster, mistakenly believing a small pet rodent will offer unconditional love; she transforms the food on her plate into a soggy mess without eating any of it. This unidentified “Child X” acts almost as a negative life force, radiating existential anxiety that permeates her surroundings like soot—but of course her mother loves her, and desperately wishes for her recovery, because that is what mothers do.
Those challenges alone would be enough for Linda to contend with. Then, a leak above the family’s apartment creates a massive hole in the ceiling, through which water gushes. The unnamed, unseen, and increasingly unbearable child whimpers about the dampness of the water-logged rug beneath her feet and asks her mother, in a plaintively manipulative tone, “Are we going to die?” Linda quickly moves them to a nearby motel whose only staff members are a sullen young goth attendant (a scowling Ivy Wolk) and a congenial, slightly flirtatious super (, relaxed and casual). Throughout all this, Linda answers calls from her absent husband (whose voice is later revealed to be Christian Slater), who offers no support beyond barking unhelpful advice over the phone. At this point, Linda is much like any overwhelmed mother, but her grasp on reality is deteriorating, and she begins making an escalating series of questionable motherly choices.
Initially, Linda makes small escapes from the motel room she shares with her sick child to smoke weed and drink wine in the courtyard, though she does monitor her daughter’s breathing via a baby monitor. Before long, she abandons the monitor entirely, instead going on lengthy walks, barely conscious of leaving her child unattended for far too long. She frequently returns to the apartment to inspect the ceiling hole, which her landlord has yet to repair—it appears to be growing and changing, its edges ragged and fleshy, like a hungry maw. Sometimes tiny specks of light swirl down from it, resembling interplanetary beings—perhaps they carry a message for Linda, some advice, anything. She desperately needs guidance, or at least sympathy, and she attempts to get it from her shrink (played, with sharp, unsettlingly humorous impatience, by ), though even he shows no interest in her grievances. Meanwhile, within the same office complex, she meets with her own patients, including as a brand-new mother who also feels overwhelmed, but in a different manner. A bundle of trembling nerves, she cannot bear to leave her infant with anyone, not even for a few minutes, though she also tells Linda that her baby never smiles. It’s a heartbreaking admission that renders the task of motherhood truly joyless. No wonder both she and Linda are struggling under its weight.
Bronstein heightens the stress factor scene by scene; If I Had Legs I’d Kick You is like the mom’s version of . (The director’s husband, Ronald Bronstein, has frequently collaborated with the , and Josh Safdie is credited as one of the film’s producers.) Everything Bronstein and Byrne are conveying here feels strikingly authentic: When Linda goes to the clinic where her daughter is being treated, a doctor there urgently assures her that her child’s illness is in no way her fault, in a condescending tone that implies she believes it’s entirely Linda’s fault. Bronstein herself portrays the doctor, and she has stated that in writing If I Had Legs, she drew from her own experience of feeling frazzled, helpless, and isolated as she navigated her own child’s serious illness.
However, perhaps the film feels a little too intimately experienced. For a significant portion at the beginning, Byrne’s face is filmed in such tight, disorienting close-ups that it becomes almost an abstraction, a Picasso-esque tangle of eyelashes and pores. Eventually, we gain more visual context, and a clearer understanding of Linda’s world. Still, the wilder and more surreal the film becomes, the more it encourages us to drift away. As Linda, Byrne is such a sympathetic performer that we feel connected to her, tethered in a sort of desperate, difficult journey. We feel immense pity for her, and we entirely comprehend why she’s breaking down. But do we truly want to accompany her every step of the way, even as she seems to be heading right over the edge? If I Had Legs I’d Kick You is hardly outright punishment, and in parts, it’s bitterly funny. Yet in the end, it’s a tremendous relief to step away from Linda’s troubles. Our own don’t seem quite so bad in comparison.
