YNOT at the Movies

What does it look like when a mind buckles under the weight of love, guilt, and exhaustion? Writer-director Mary Bronstein's darkly funny "If I Had Legs I'd Kick You" (USA 2025 | 113 min.) is a deeply compassionate character study, with Rose Byrne's extraordinary performance, that turns a mother's unraveling into something bruising, human, and unforgettable.

The story follows Linda (Rose Byrne), a Long Island therapist and mother whose life spirals into chaos as she struggles to manage her daughter's eating disorder, an illness that has left the child dependent on a feeding tube. Her husband Charles (Christian Slater), a cruise ship captain, remains absent at sea, while one of her patients, Caroline (Danielle Macdonald), suddenly disappears. As the weight of caregiving, abandonment, and professional responsibility crushes her, Linda loses her bearings, caught between mounting paranoia and crippling guilt as she slides toward a breakdown she can neither diagnose nor escape.

Rose Byrne gives an astonishing, career-defining performance, one that earned her the Silver Bear for Best Leading Performance at this year's Berlin International Film Festival. She inhabits Linda's every nervous tic and flicker of dread with startling precision and turns a character who could easily have been pitied or dismissed into someone achingly human. She balances panic, denial, and dark humor with unnerving realism, grounding a role that demands extremes. Her sessions with her colleague Dr. Spring (Conan O'Brien), also Linda's own therapist, sting with awkward comedy and emotional volatility, while her fraught exchanges with James (A$AP Rocky), the motel caretaker she encounters after being displaced, offer surprising moments of warmth that highlight Linda's fragility.

Mary Bronstein's filmmaking plunges deep into Linda's psychological turbulence, blurring the line between domestic drama and mordant comedy. The film's tight, claustrophobic framing and sensory overload mirror Linda's collapsing state of mind, while its tone refuses judgment, offering instead a raw, empathetic exploration of mental collapse and the impossible pressures of motherhood.

One of the film's boldest choices is to keep Linda's daughter (Delaney Quinn) largely out of view until the very end. The child's absence, suggested only by her voice and the ever-present feeding tube, becomes a haunting metaphor for distance, denial, and the way stress warps perception. When the girl finally appears, the effect is shattering--a release of tension and a heartbreaking reminder of the love and connection obscured by Linda's turmoil.

The film unfolds as a gripping character study on burnout, self-blame, and survival. It captures the chaos of the mind when every responsibility becomes unbearable and even acts of care feel like failures. The film doesn't offer comfort or easy answers; instead, it presents a woman fraying in real time and asks us to witness her with empathy, without flinching, and without judgment.

"If I Had Legs I'd Kick You" opens in theaters on Friday, October 10, 2025.