If I Had Legs” Review: Plot, Performances, and Why It Stands Out

Rose Byrne Delivers Career-Defining Performance in Unflinching Portrait of Maternal Breaking Point

Starring: Rose Byrne, Conan O'Brien, Danielle Macdonald, Christian Slater, A$AP Rocky
Written and Directed by: Mary Bronstein
Distributed by: A24
Rating: ★★★★ (4/5 stars)-Kathia Woods

Mary Bronstein's "If I Had Legs I'd Kick You" is not a movie that makes you feel better. It doesn't sugarcoat motherhood or promise a cathartic end to all the pain. Instead, Bronstein has written a fever-dream descent into maternal collapse that doesn't shy away from the ugly, unspeakable truths about parenting that polite society wants us to keep hidden. She did this by drawing on her own terrible experiences caring for her sick daughter.

Rose Byrne is at the center of the movie, and her performance is the best of her career. Byrne portrays Linda, a therapist who confronts extreme challenges in tending to her daughter's severe eating disorder. She becomes a woman we recognize from our worst fears about ourselves—the version where everything we're barely holding together finally falls apart.

Bronstein starts with a very close-up shot of Byrne's face, which makes every crease of worry and exhaustion look bigger. He rarely pulls back. This claustrophobic framing becomes the film's visual language, trapping us inside Linda's deteriorating mental state just like she is trapped by things she can't change. When the ceiling of Linda's Montauk apartment falls down, flooding her home and forcing her and her daughter to stay in a run-down motel, the metaphor is almost too clear. But Bronstein earns it by showing how committed Byrne is to her physicality. Her face twists in ways that make it look like she's barely holding herself together, let alone her life.

What makes Byrne's performance so devastating is her willingness to show us a mother who isn't just struggling—she's failing, and on some level, she knows it. There's a moment when Linda removes her daughter's feeding tube against medical advice, then hallucinates the surgical hole closing. It's magical thinking born of desperation, the fantasy that if she just refuses reality hard enough, it might bend to her will. Byrne plays these scenes with a dissociation that's both heartbreaking and terrifying. As she told IndieWire, "She's so disassociated from the experience that's happening to her… I don't think Linda can see her daughter until the very end."

The movie doesn't shy away from showing the dark side of motherhood. It goes beyond Linda to include her patient Caroline (Danielle Macdonald), a new mother who is so obsessed with the thought of accidentally hurting her baby that she leaves the baby in the middle of a therapy session. When Linda reluctantly comforts the child before giving it to the police, you can tell how relieved she is that she is no longer in charge. She doesn't want it either. Most movies about motherhood would never be brave enough to show this ugly moment of honesty.

Bronstein populates Linda's world with men who remain conspicuously absent or ineffectual. Her husband, Charles (Christian Slater), is away on a two-month work trip, calling periodically to suggest Linda enjoy margaritas by the motel pool, as if her reality is a vacation rather than a nightmare. When he finally returns and repairs the ceiling hole himself, it becomes clear he could have helped all along—he simply chose not to prioritize it. The film's title takes on new meaning: if Linda had legs—if she had agency, autonomy, and the ability to run—she'd kick you. But she doesn't. She's trapped.

The supporting cast is also excellent, especially Conan O'Brien as Linda's therapist, who is getting more and more frustrated with her. O'Brien plays a character who is beyond help in a performance that doesn't include his usual humor. This performance shows how far professional help can go when someone is unwilling or unable to be saved. Their therapy scenes are great examples of how to deal with awkward silence. O'Brien's quiet expressions of discomfort say a lot as Linda talks about her dreams that don't mean anything while avoiding her real problems.

The film's sound design and cinematography (by Christopher Messina) work in concert to create an atmosphere of suffocating anxiety. Constant beeping from medical equipment, the oppressive closeness of the camera, and jarring cuts—all conspire to put viewers in Linda's frayed nervous system. Some will find this approach unbearable; others will recognize it as the most honest cinematic depiction of extreme parental stress they've ever witnessed.

Bronstein's movie is one of many "difficult mother" movies that go against the Madonna/whore binary that Hollywood usually gives women. Byrne shows us a mother who doesn't just struggle—she breaks, like Tilda Swinton in "We Need to Talk About Kevin" or Toni Collette in "Hereditary." And most importantly, Bronstein won't punish her for it. The last scene of the movie, where Linda gasps on the beach after running into the ocean and choosing to come back instead of disappearing, isn't happy. It's just a mother who has decided to keep trying, no matter what.

Byrne won the Silver Bear for Best Leading Performance at the Berlin Film Festival for "If I Had Legs I'd Kick You." Now she's up for a Golden Globe for the same role. If awards season is fair, this performance—raw, unglamorous, and heartbreakingly real—will get her an Oscar nomination. Since "Damages," Byrne has spent too much time making comedies in studios. This movie shows that Hollywood has been underestimating her for years.

The resulting movie isn't for everyone. There are no easy answers, no redemption arc, and no promise that love will win out in the end. Instead, it gives you something much rarer: a hard look at what being a mother can cost when society expects perfection but doesn't give much help. We see the truth that scares us the most in Bronstein's vision and Byrne's performance: sometimes, being a good mother means just getting by.

If I Had Legs I’d Kick You is currently in theaters.