In a sentenceRose Byrne looks as though one more offer of help might qualify as a threat
Linda (Rose Byrne) is an exhausted mother struggling to cope and reluctant to accept help. Her daughter (Delaney Quinn, credited as Child) stays outside the frame while Linda’s distress occupies it. Conan O’Brien plays the Therapist in a story that stays close to a parent whose anger and needs are becoming difficult to contain. Linda wants some relief from the demands of motherhood, but her own resistance makes support difficult. The film follows her increasingly strained experience, with little distance from her face and little room for another person’s view of what she is going through.
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Rose Byrne is painfully convincing in Mary Bronstein’s abrasive drama about maternal exhaustion. Its constant pressure can wear us down, but Linda’s anger and resistance to help make this worth watching if an anxious evening appeals.
If I Had Legs I’d Kick You gives an exhausted mother little room to compose herself and gives us scarcely any more. Mary Bronstein, who writes and directs, stays with Linda’s anger, distress and reluctance to accept help without trying to make each response reasonable. We think it is a good, punishing film, sustained by Rose Byrne even when the relentless pressure begins to feel repetitive. Anyone looking for a consoling account of parenthood should know that Linda is allowed to be selfish, and that the film does not hurry to apologise for her.
Rose Byrne is convincing because she does not make Linda’s suffering an excuse for everything. Her resistance to help can be maddening, and the performance lets that remain so even while making her exhaustion believable. The bitter humour works because Linda is allowed to be difficult without immediately becoming a joke at her own expense. We are not being asked to certify her as a good mother before we can take her distress seriously.
Christopher Messina’s close-ups are central to that discomfort. We felt trapped by the attention to Linda’s strained face, particularly when the frame denied us the relief of looking at anyone else. Keeping her daughter offscreen makes that restriction more pointed: the person needing care is not available to redirect our sympathy whenever Linda becomes abrasive. The sound is oppressive too, leaving little sense of quiet beyond what we can see. It is an effective use of techniques associated with horror, even though the subject is a mother’s exhaustion.
Lucian Johnston’s editing keeps the pressure fairly constant, which is useful and eventually wearing. There are stretches when we have understood Linda’s agitation but are still being asked to sit inside it without learning much more about her. At 113 minutes, the film has time to develop that feeling beyond its first impact, yet too often chooses simply to sustain it. A little more variation would have made the difficult stretches harder to dismiss as repetition.
The more surreal passages bring a related problem. Carmen Navis’s production design contributes to the oppressive surroundings, but the close framing already does much of that work. The stranger imagery can feel unnecessary when a face has communicated the distress so clearly. We found ourselves wanting more time to consider Linda’s behaviour, rather than another reason to feel hemmed in by the film.
Within the family drama, it is welcome to find a mother whose unpleasant feelings are taken seriously without being made attractive. The film does not need its more conspicuous oddities to hold our attention, because the performance gives us enough to disagree with and enough to recognise. That is why we recommend it despite the stretches when the pressure stops producing much beyond more pressure. Choose it for Rose Byrne, but leave it for another evening if patience is already in short supply.
Most critics respond positively to this punishing portrait of maternal distress, with Rose Byrne’s performance drawing the clearest agreement. The reviews repeatedly praise her ability to convey exhaustion, anger and grim humour without softening Linda’s difficult behaviour. Praise also centres on the claustrophobic close-ups, oppressive sound and surreal atmosphere, which make her anxiety hard to escape. For the most enthusiastic critics, the film’s black comedy makes its depiction of parental strain both unsettling and painfully funny.
The reservations concern how long that pressure can remain productive. Several critics find the sustained anxiety exhausting, even while admiring its impact, and responses range from enthusiastic praise to mixed assessments, with none categorised as negative. /Film finds that the surreal passages do not always fit smoothly with the rest; Vulture considers the film compelling but unfinished and uncertain where to go next. Byrne remains widely admired across that divide.
The review praises the film as an intense, blackly funny rollercoaster of motherhood. It singles out Rose Byrne’s performance as a tour de force of matriarchal fury.
Read the full review →Ehrlich calls the film a harrowing, frequently hilarious portrait of maternal distress, praising its uncompromising surreal intensity. He particularly singles out Rose Byrne’s caustic, fully committed performance and the film’s claustrophobic expressionism.
Read the full review →Zigler calls the film a stunning, brutal portrait of a mother’s exhaustion and resistance to help. She singles out Rose Byrne’s performance for conveying both pain and selfish ambivalence.
Read the full review →Shaffer finds the film a precisely controlled, anxiety-inducing tonal rollercoaster, with only its ambiguous, Lynchian ceiling sequences falling short. He especially praises Rose Byrne’s elastic, go-for-broke performance, which anchors the film’s relentless depiction of burnout.
Read the full review →Balanescu finds the pressure-cooker film perversely enjoyable and thought-provoking, despite its lack of subtlety. She singles out Rose Byrne’s fearless, grimly funny performance for anchoring the spiralling story.
Read the full review →The critic finds the film piercingly funny and acutely observant, with Rose Byrne deftly conveying Linda’s mounting emotional strain. They especially praise Bronstein’s decision to keep the daughter offscreen, which draws attention to Linda’s state of mind.
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A Woman Under the InfluenceAnother difficult family portrait carried by a woman allowed contradictory, uncomfortable feelings.
The BabadookMaternal exhaustion becomes horror, with anger that cannot simply be wished away.
Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 BruxellesDomestic routine receives patient attention until its small demands become almost unbearable.
Mother · not reviewed yetA mother’s determination becomes unsettling, with bitter humour complicating our sympathy.
Saint Omer · not reviewed yetA quieter examination of motherhood that makes easy moral certainty difficult.
