NYFF 63: Rose Byrne sinks her teeth into Mary Bronstein's "If I Had Legs I'd Kick You"

by Cláudio Alves

No mother is ever good enough. Not according to her children, nor to extended family, friends, nosy neighbors, presumptuous strangers. Not in the collective imagination of society at large and, above all else, herself. It might not seem like it, considering all the dubious looks and insulting concerns thrown her way, but she is her own worst critic. Others try their best, but there will never be a harshest judge than mother. Hell, she's prosecutor, accused and accuser, key witness and vengeful jury all wrapped into one in a trial that might sound like a pity party but is closer to a circus of fire and fury and self-loathing. 

Just ask Linda, the ever-aggrieved lead of Mary Bronstein's If I Had Legs I'd Kick You, played by Rose Byrne as a woman under the influence and on the verge of a nervous breakdown. And who can blame her for being such a mess? There's a hole in her daughter's stomach and a hole in her ceiling…

When it rains, it pours, and, in Linda's case, it pours right through her master bedroom. This disaster in domestic infrastructure comes as punctuation to a truly horrible day, one among many in the life of this Montauk counsellor currently dealing with her daughter's unknown illness while her husband is working at sea. And, if anything, the days are only getting worse. After all, she's got to relocate to a shitty motel with all the kid's medical machinery in tow, and the contractor who's supposed to be taking care of her crumbling ceiling has gone MIA. Also, the faraway spouse keeps calling to be a nagging nuisance and demand hole pics – not the fun kind.

A demon hamster from hell and a car crash add more fun to the mix, with the Mom Talk group she must attend bringing on another stressor. The same can be said of the doctors following her daughter's case, always coming up with unrealistic expectations that neither Linda nor the kid will be able to fulfill. She's set up to fail, and she knows it, one more reason to steam in her own fury and spend nights drinking herself stupid as a form of anesthesia. At work, a problematic attachment to a colleague regularly rears its ugly head, while patients bring their own load of misery. Including a baby abandoned by a fellow mom who has found herself at the breaking point, and onto whom Linda can't help but project her own agonies.

Indeed, If I Had Legs I'd Kick You is attuned to the blame and shame of motherhood like few other American films of recent vintage - Nightbitch tries, but only Tully comes close. Here, these sentiments are a bottomless pit, some cosmic certainty wanly denied by frosted platitudes on top of bittersweet cupcakes. They're a gaping maw from up above, the ceiling chasm that rhymes with that other opening, that fleshy one connecting a child's body to her feeding tube. The symbolic hole vomits asbestos and black mold, syphoning the camera's gaze into its mysterious void so it can better throw the story out of sorts. The hole beckons with a song of starlight and rushing water and voices. It wails. 

If you thought Bronstein was going to keep faithful to the indie realism lineages that go from Cassavetes to the Safdies, Linda's ceiling is here to disabuse you of that notion. We're here to party poetic into nothingness, magical realism for the win. Reader, I can't blame you if your response to that description is something akin to "Magical realism? In this economy?" Truth be told, sometimes it feels like the director bites more than she can chew with this particular flourish. Nevertheless, there's value to Bronstein's flirtation with outright delirium. If nothing else, it's a variation, a breath of fresh air where formal strategies are concerned.

Even the occasional cut to a medium shot feels like a release from the claustrophobic agonies of a perpetual close-up. The distance, whether the space between camera and subject or between tonal extremes, is a moment of decompression. Because people may talk, the world may turn, and chaos reign, but the camera will not let Byrne out of its sight. To the point where the daughter character is defined in absentia, heard but not seen, her plight shaping the narrative from beyond the frame's limits. During the opening salvo, Bronstein's approach isn't exclusive to the child either, making the viewer anticipate an experiment that would posit its leading lady in a horror film of off-screen ghosts. 

If I Had Legs I'd Kick You isn't bold enough to keep Byrne forever alone on screen, but one can hardly see that as a demerit when the supporting cast is this good. It'd be criminal to waste Conan O'Brien, Danielle MacDonald, Christian Slater, and an electrifying A$AP Rocky. Still, Bronstein's film only works because Rose Byrne is able to pull off its panic attack-inducing high-wire act. She's more than the glue holding everything together. She's the foundation of the whole enterprise, its reason for being, and central tenet. She's also in charge of sustaining its wild tone which offers ample proof that tragedy is best when played by clowns. 

And Byrne is the perfect wild-eyed jester, a gifted comedienne whose talent for discombobulation is only second to her skill at inciting laughter. Better than anyone else, this year's Silver Bear-winning star understands she's in a pitch-black comedy with no fucks left to give. So, she invites you to witness Linda fall to pieces, shattering onto a rotting floor that's about to open into an abyss, and laugh while you're doing it. Or sob, or hyper-ventilate, or all those at the same time. It's the world's most valid crashout and, through it all, the actress keeps the plates spinning, her effort obvious in a way that works wonders for the characterization rather than detracting from it.

Bronstein both rewards her star and puts her under the microscope, always returning to the aforementioned close-ups, with a special emphasis on those doe-brown peepers. Honestly, by the end of If I Had Legs I'd Kick You, I felt like I knew Byrne's eyes better than those I've seen staring back from the mirror for over thirty years. The papery skin around them, crepe tissue-like, is imprinted into my memory like hot irons on hide. How could it not? The film starts with them, wrinkled with worry, frantic, tearfully bejeweling a visage carved by endless woes, pulled tight by the need to explode and the duty to hold it together against all odds.

Look into those eyes, and you'll see a universe of meanings that words can't begin to communicate, even when they're delivered in a register so demonstrative that it skirts grotesquerie. For example, when talking to patients, Linda will often transition from talking about their issues to monologuing about herself, the shift happening more in her gaze than the verbiage. It's a slight tuning out and vacant stare that swiftly recalibrated into a sort of solipsistic unseeing. In them, you see the height of a fully-committed performance that might be the crowning achievement of a career that has no shortage of greatness, from The Goddess of 1967 to Bridesmaids, Spy, and beyond.

That said, I fear this review may undervalue the craftsmanship at play. Though nothing here would work without Byrne, there are other elements worth praising beyond acting. Consider the frazzling sound design or Elizabeth Warn's comedic stylings. Linda's therapist costume is one of the film's best jokes, and it only gets funnier as the narrative unravels. A brazen attempt at conveying stability, it can't help but come off as the least convincing lie in the known universe. Lucian Johnston's editing is similarly sharp. A cut from roadkill to microwaved lasagna that had me howling, confirming that If I Had Legs I'd Kick You has jokes to spare. It's always gallows humor, though.

At the New York Film Festival, If I Had Legs I'd Kick You is playing as part of the Main Slate. It is set to release in select theaters next week, on October 10, distributed by A24.