Sundance 2025 Review: IF I HAD LEGS I'D KICK YOU, Momma Gonna Knock You Out

In writer-director Mary Bronstein’s (Yeast) first film in almost two decades, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, a panic attack-inducing, motherhood-centered comedy-drama, the partial collapse of a ceiling and the tidal floodwater it releases into the apartment below leaves Linda (Rose Byrne) and her family dislocated physically, mentally, and emotionally.

 

That doesn’t qualify as the beginning or even the ending of Linda’s anxiety-ridden, symbol-heavy nightmare. 

 

Linda’s nightmare stretches back several years or more, somewhere around the date her preteen daughter (Delaney Quinn) was diagnosed with a life-threatening illness, necessitating not just a feeding tube, but constant, draining care. It's made all the worse by the absence of Linda’s husband (Christian Slater, heard more than seen)

 

Linda struggles with the demands related to mothering a chronically ill child, her work-life as a licensed therapist, and a conglomeration of fears and anxieties brought into the real world by the aforementioned collapsed ceiling, the ever-expanding hole it leaves behind, and the associated thoughts, feelings, and half-memories that constantly vie for attention in Linda’s increasingly fissured headspace.

 

Opening with a scene fixated on Linda’s point-of-view (other voices are heard, but never seen) and bolstered by a haunting credit sequence, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You exists in the realm of existential horror, albeit the horror of everyday existence, of failures real and imagined, and a foreboding sense of impending doom.

 

Only later do we meet the face behind the voice, Doctor Spring (Bronstein tripling up), the medical specialist who cares for Linda’s mostly unseen daughter. Warning of serious, if unspecified, and ominous implications of a lack of progress in the unnamed daughter’s condition, the specialist also functions as yet another obstacle for Linda to overcome, circumvent, or ignore as long as possible.

 

Punctuated by frequent, conflict-ridden conversations with her absent husband about apartment repairs and their daughter’s health, Linda desperately needs emotional support. She doesn’t get any. She doesn’t get it from her unnamed therapist (Conan O’Brien), her perpetually absent, excuse-making husband, or even the semi-friendly James (A$AP Rocky), who ingratiates himself with Linda after she relocates to a motel, daughter in tow, to await apartment repairs to finish. 

 

Giving a new spin to an old phrase, “Physician heal thyself,” Linda’s work as a licensed therapist, while both rewarding and challenging, doesn’t offer any insights into her own problems or, more importantly, how to resolve them in her favor. One patient, Caroline (Danielle MacDonald), repeatedly frets whether she’s connecting with her newborn child or simply being a “good mother” as defined by social and cultural conventions. Another patient clings too closely to Linda, sharing intimate dreams involving his therapist (Linda). Another, wealthier patient uses Linda primarily as a sounding board for a strong of inanities.

 

As Linda’s already fragile mental state increasingly unravels, heading to a point of no return personally and professionally, Bronstein calls on Byrne to virtually bare her soul. Always front and center, often in medium shots and close-ups (classical establishing shots are few and far between), Byrne delivers a mesmerizing master-class in acting, unfailingly hitting every emotion, beat, and color of Linda’s rapid descent into a personal purgatory, partially of her own making, with a naturalism and realism rarely seen on screen (or off). 

 

Comparisons to the Safdie Brothers’ recent masterpiece of anxiety, Uncut Gems, are more than deserved and not only because Ronald Bronstein and Josh Safdie produced If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, but also because of the frenetic, frantic, high-stakes pacing associated with Linda’s multi-tiered predicament. Circling around a seemingly arbitrary deadline that will determine the treatment for Linda’s daughter adds another extreme layer of tension and suspense. Likewise, the abrupt disappearance of one patient minutes before the end of her session, as well as a group meeting that Linda dodges, ostensibly because it’s unnecessary and a waste of precious, limited time, but mostly because it might force Linda to accept her limitations as a mother.

 

Buoyed by impressively assured direction by Bronstein, Christopher Messina’s hyper-focused, nimble cinematography, and Lucian Johnston’s skillfully fraught editing, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You emerges as a best-in-festival nominee and a sure-fire audience-getter when it debuts in theaters under the A24 banner later this year.