Producers: Sara Murphy, Ryan Zacarias, Ronald Bronstein, Josh Safdie, Eli Bush, Conor Hanon and Richie Doyle Director: Mary Bronstein Screenplay: Mary Bronstein Cast: Rose Byrne, Conan O’Brien, Danielle Macdonald, Delaney Quinn, A$AP Rocky, Ivy Wolk, Daniel Zolghadri, Mary Bronstein, Mark Stolzenberg, Christian Slater, Josh Pais and Ella Beatty Distributor: A24
Grade: B
Comedy of frustration often has a strong undercurrent of pathos—think of the films of comics like Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton or Laurel and Hardy, or, to cite a more recent example, John Hughes’s “Planes, Trains & Automobiles.” Mary Bronstein’s “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You” is a tragicomedy of frustration, and its undercurrent is a howl of despair.
The overall subject is motherhood, or quasi-single motherhood, and the trauma of dealing with its demands and the stress of trying to juggle them with a professional career. It’s the same concern that animated last year’s Marielle Heller movie “Nightbitch,” but while the tone of that film was dark, this one is pitch-black.
Linda (Rose Byrne) is married, but her husband Charles (Christian Slater) is absent for reasons that will be made clear toward the close, leaving his wife on her own caring for their daughter (Delaney Quinn), who’s seriously ill with an intestinal condition that, as a doctor (Bronstein) icily impresses on Linda, requires her to gain a specified amount of weight before she can be treated; the fact that the girl refuses the food Linda prepares threatens her life, and so she must be fed with a tube each night.
That alone would be sufficient to cause Linda enormous stress, but to add to her troubles a huge hole appear in the ceiling of her Long Island apartment, with debris and water crashing onto the floor. The slowness of the landlord to respond forces her to move with her daughter into a seedy motel where the none-too-friendly attitude of James (ASAP Rocky), the cheeky manager, is exceeded only by the positively hostile one of his punkish clerk Diana (Ivy Wolk).
At the clinic where she works as a therapist, Linda is confronted by patients whose neediness drives her to distraction. The most challenging is Caroline (Danielle Macdonald), a young mother so incapable of dealing with the challenge of caring for her child that ultimately she abandons her infant in Linda’s office, yet another problem to deal with. But Stephen (Daniel Zolghadri), a young fellow obsessed with Linda keeping his appointment time clear, is almost as troublesome. Their demands, along with her own difficulties, drive her to consult ever more frequently with a colleague (Conan O’Brien) who’s increasingly irritated by her impositions on his time.
And did we mention the parking attendant (Mark Stolzenberg) at Caroline’s school with whom Linda has a running battle about sitting in spaces too long? Or the fender bender with another driver (Josh Pais) that sends her into a frenzy?
Linda’s life is one disaster after another, and though James unexpectedly offers some help with her daughter and the apartment—or rather tries to, since his interventions usually turn out badly (especially for him)—he proves more adept in securing the wine and drugs she comes to depend on for a few moments of respite at night.
The film is at once harrowing and darkly funny, a comedy of misfortune with tragic overtones. Viewers may find themselves averting their eyes fairly often, but there are two scenes that some will find simply unendurable. One begins on a relatively cheerful note as Linda reluctantly agrees to buy her daughter a pet hamster; but the ride home with the caged animal proves yet another disaster. The other comes after Linda has reached her limit with the phony camaraderie of her fellow mothers at the clinic where her daughter is being treated and decides to follow her therapist’s advice and take charge of things herself. What occurs is a decision regarding the girl’s feeding tube that takes on a hallucinatory tone that might make you think of Cronenberg.
One’s tempted to call “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You” a one-woman show even though strictly speaking it’s not. Certainly Byrne gives a virtuoso performance, her dominance accentuated by Bronstein’s decision to employ frequent extreme close-ups that isolate her from the world—we never even see her daughter’s face—and to have the film shot and edited in jerky, deliberately abrasive fashion. Cinematographer Christopher Messina and editor Lucian Johnston ably realize her vision. Still, while praising Byrne’s courage and dedication, one shouldn’t overlook the loose-limbed support of ASAP Rocky, or the intensity of Macdonald, or the surprisingly restrained, quietly funny turn by O’Brien. Nor the effectiveness of the forbidding environment fashioned by production designer Carmen Navis and costumer Elizabeth Warn, as well as the haunting sound design by Felipe Messeder.
Bronstein’s film is inarguably not for everyone, and it strikes with a blowtorch rather than a scalpel. But however uncomfortable a watch, it’s a potent piece showcasing an extraordinary performance by Rose Byrne.