If I Had Legs I'd Kick You

A Bleak but Compelling Portrait of Motherhood

Motherhood has been the surprising common theme for many 2025 releases, from Die My Love (2025) to Hamnet (2025), Bring Her Back (2025), The Perfect Neighbor (2025), and Young Mothers (2025). The latest to join this exploration of often unnamed, dark thoughts of motherhood is the searing If I Had Legs I’d Kick You (2025).

If I Had Legs I’d Kick You follows Linda (Rose Byrne), a therapist and mother of a young daughter (Delaney Quinn) who has an eating disorder and feeds through a tube in her stomach. Linda is cripplingly harried due to the needs of her daughter, an absent cruise-ship-captain father (Christian Slater), a series of taxing patients, and a roof cave-in at her home, which forces her to move to a motel.

If I Had Legs I’d Kick You is the second feature film by Mary Bronstein, who wrote and directed the film. Bronstein also co-stars as the extremely judgmental health clinic doctor, Spring. With this sophomore effort, Bronstein delivers yet another bruising view of the darkest elements and thoughts of motherhood, with an unfiltered varnish that astounds in its honesty. The greatest trick Bronstein uses to convey how wearying childcare becomes is that she never shows Linda’s daughter completely onscreen (who is never named). We get glimpses of her out of focus or just out of frame, akin to adult characters in cartoons. This makes the incessant complaining and whining of the child even more enveloping, rendering her physical size irrelevant to her towering and tormenting presence.

Bronstein uses multiple cinematic tools at her disposal to further transmit the sense of exhaustion, claustrophobia, and Sisyphean curse that mothers can suffer as singular child-rearers. The cinematography, by Christopher Messina, keeps a tight stalk on Linda’s face, so that we are frequently plastered against her pores and eye bags, feeling her inability to escape her own self. The score is also curiously deployed, with many scenes suddenly featuring a dark, cavernous, and ominous pounding, like a stalking omen ready to pounce at any moment. This sense of isolation is emphasized by the near-total lack of help or friendly faces throughout most of the film. Everyone else fails to understand her plight and sees her as an overreacting woman, rather than recognizing the suffocating prison Linda inhabits. Worst of all, as Linda is barely scraping by, she is constantly judged on her parenting by every character she encounters, reinforcing the feeling of ambush and self-hatred.

Rose Byrne delivers the performance of her career so far. The Australian actress has shown her range before, excelling in comedy with the likes of Bridesmaids (2011) and Spy (2015), while also showcasing a darker side in Insidious (2010) and Mrs. America (2020). With If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, she is enrapturing, choosing not to overact but instead to transmit conflicting thoughts of self-hatred, guilt, and resignation – frequently all at once – in unmoving, thousand-yard stares. Hers is a performance less concerned with demonstrating ability than with transporting viewers completely into her interior; we feel as trapped as Linda and marvel at the patience and sweetness she is still able to still wring in certain moments. In the end, even when she begins to harbor “Medea”-like thoughts, we never blame her.

The surrounding cast is solid as well. Quinn should be commended for a largely off-screen performance as the daughter, employing a seemingly sweet voice that becomes the most grating sound viewers hear. There is also a surprising dramatic turn from Conan O’Brien as Linda’s therapist, who proves incapable of empathizing with or understanding her plight.

Bronstein litters her film with symbolism, parallels, and allusions to motherhood throughout. One of the opening scenes, of a ceiling beginning to leak water, only to burst forth violently and reveal a gaping hole of emptiness behind, could not be a blunter allusion to birth. While many of these moments are welcome and add richness to the text and commentary, they eventually become repetitive and tangled, such that the central dilemma is diluted. Subplots involving a disappeared patient, a feud with parking personnel, and the purchase of drugs unnecessarily elongate the film without adding much to the narrative.

Nevertheless, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You is a harrowing yet transporting examination of the psychology of motherhood. Byrne delivers a tour de force performance I won’t soon forget, while Bronstein’s hounding, harassing direction leaves you scarred and clenched. In a year full of urgently needed discussion around the unspoken elements of motherhood, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You is a worthy entrant into the dialogue; indeed, it would make for a strong, if rather depressing, double feature with Die My Love.

8.3/10