If I Had Legs I’d Kick You
(2024 | USA | 113 minutes | Mary Bronstein)

It’s a facile comparison given the involvement of a Safdie brother on the production team, but If I Had Legs I’d Kick You very much has the feeling of Uncut Gems for motherhood. I mean this as a very high compliment to Mary Bronstein’s incredible nightmare of a film that’s surged to the top of every conversation at the syear’s festival.

As Linda, a unspooling mom taking care of a young daughter with special needs, Rose Byrne lives up to the impossibly immense festival hype. It’s a tremendous performance from an actor who doesn’t always get her flowers and she holds every frame. Filmed in extreme close-ups, we meet her as the sky is falling (almost literally), her kid won’t eat, and her husband’s away at sea for months at a time.

Forced out of their home due to a massive flood that explodes through their ceiling, she, her daughter, and all of their medical equipment relocate to a shabby seaside model. Staffed by a perpetually unpleasant clerk (Ivy Wolk), the motel’s most relatable neighbor (A$AP Rocky) is friendly but also looking for help securing substances from the Dark Web.

Even when she’s holding it together amid these trying circumstances, it’s clear that it’s only at a surface level. Her network of support is limited to her husband yelling at her on the phone (the perfectly cast voice of Christian Slater), her therapist refusing to get pulled into her drama (hilariously dry Conan O’Brien), and her daughter’s school constantly haranguing her to schedule a meeting to talk about how to get her kid to reach her milestones for weight gain.

Situating us more deeply in Linda’s fraying psyche, Bronstein keeps the child offscreen, such that we hear her complaints, pains, and (frankly) emotional manipulations. Unafraid to dwell in the intentionally uncomfortable dynamic, the film takes the onslaught of stresses of renovation, motherhood, and work (the reveal of her job is one of the film’s funniest surprises) as an occasion to spiral through delirium as very poor life choices mount. Never pleasant, it’s still a masterpiece of the darkest humor of ever unfolding domestic horrors.

A major standout of the festival; A24 is slated to release it later this year. Feels like a perfect Mother’s Day release.

If I Had Legs I’d Kick You played as an official selection of the Premieres program at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. It has additional screenings in Park City and Salt Lake City throughout the festival.