If I Had Legs I’d Kick You: ‘feverish’ dark comedy is a ‘hell of a ride’

It’s little surprise Rose Byrne has been nominated for an Oscar for her turn as a “beleaguered mother” in “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You”, said Clarisse Loughrey in The Independent. “It’s less performance, more self-administered open heart surgery.”

She stars as Linda, a psychotherapist with an absent husband whose infant daughter is suffering from an undisclosed chronic illness that requires a feeding tube and round-the-clock care. When a “great big watery hole” begins to appear in the ceiling of their home, Linda and her daughter are forced to move into a motel.

The film soon unfurls into a “psychological horror-comedy of postnatal depression and lonely parental stress”, said Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian. Byrne delivers a “barnstorming performance” as a “mother and therapist” who “must present at all times as keeping it together, but who in fact is losing it every day”.

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“If I Had Legs I’d Kick You” is part of a “burgeoning genre” of films which reveal motherhood to be a “sinister trap, a social prison and, very literally, a trigger for psychosis”, said Kevin Maher in The Times.

Writer-director Mary Bronstein brings “passive-aggressive aplomb” to her cameo as the doctor treating Linda’s daughter: “Nurse Ratched for the self-care generation”. And Byrne elicits “enormous empathy”, bringing Linda vividly to life with her “lightning-fast double-takes” and “sharp monologues”. Producer Josh Safdie also leaves his mark, helping to infuse the film with a “manic energy” akin to “Marty Supreme”, his Oscar-tipped hit about a shoe salesman desperately trying to make it as a professional table tennis player.

Packed with “close-ups and close calls”, Bronstein’s “feverish film will have you sweating”, said Chris Wasser in the Irish Independent. But it’s a “hell of a ride” and Byrne is outstanding as a mother forced to cope with everything alone. “Exhilarating cinema.”