Written and directed by Mary Bronstein, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You is an excellent 2025 psychological drama starring Rose Byrne. A challenging film about mental health struggles, it explores the lead character’s descent into major instability.
The plot is driven along by the brilliance of Rose Byrne, quite the performance in a very challenging piece. It follows a mother stretched to her psychological limits dealing with work, an absent husband, and young daughter struggling with an illness.
There’s Never Enough Wine in If I Had Legs I’d Kick You
Okay, we feel the trailer doesn’t do the film justice. Over two hours this is quite the slow burner, with Rose Byrne’s character Linda allowed the time for a realistic sense of mental decline.
Byrne is probably most famous for her role as a Little Miss Perfect type in Kristen Wiig’s Bridesmaids (2011). At 47, this is her first notable serious acting role, which kind of highlights how difficult it is for actors to get a role worthy of their talents.
As she’s goddamn awesome in this. A hell of a performance.
The narrative follows Linda as she gradually loses it, descending further and further into a world of stress and mental instability. She works as a psychotherapist, with her husband Charles (Christian Slater) working away from home as a ship’s captain. Meanwhile, her daughter has a feeding disorder and is anxiety-ridden.
Linda seems to be aware she’s stressed, but in denial about the true extent, but is nevertheless seeking counsel in her therapist colleague (an unexpected serious turn by Conan O’Brien).
You never see the daughter, all you ever hear is her clingy voice, screams, and general protestations.
The struggles with this, including driving her daughter daily to the hospital, then to school, whilst also managing her day job, is capped off when her apartment’s roof collapses and is flooded. This catalogue of problems reminds us of the Coen brother’s excellent A Serious Man (2009) and the consideration of how the hell everything can go wrong at once.
Faces exhaustion through stress and lack of sleep, she starts drinking wine heavily every night and smoking weed. These don’t help and her behaviour becomes increasingly unstable.
Some elements of the story become surrealist. There’s a scene with a newly bought pet hamster that makes you question reality, as if Linda is so exhausted she’s hallucinating things.
That’s certainly the case at times as it’s made clear she’s imagining some occurrences. Other times, the audience is left guessing what’s going on. Such as with the open-ended nature of the film’s conclusion, where the peak of Linda’s mania arrives.
We should imagine many mothers who watch If I Had Legs I’d Kick You and relate to it enormously.
It’s not outright a feminist text, we’d argue, it’s more a naturalistic focus on one woman’s battle with rapidly declining mental health. There aren’t any answers provided for what Linda should do, more it’s an accurate depiction of how someone can lose control. And in that depiction, people can find that all-important relatable solace.
Not that If I Had Legs I’d Kick You is a miserable experience. There are lashings of excellent dark humour and absurdist happenings, but it really is Rose Byrne’s fantastic performance that should get you watching the thing.
The Production of If I Had Legs I’d Kick You
The ever-excellent American independent company A24 led this production. They’re responsible for backing so many modern classics and here’s another. The film got its debut at the Sundance 2025 Film Festival and launched in February 2025 across international cinemas.
It didn’t get a huge distribution as we can’t recall seeing it advertised here in the UK. But it did well enough to make $1.7 million at the box office off its limited budget. It launched on Blu-ray and DVD in December 2025 (reminder to us, we need to get a copy).
Rose Byrne’s performance got huge swathes of praise. She was nominated for Best Actress at the 2026 Oscars and won the same award at various other festivals and awards ceremonies this year. Don’t straight! She deserved it. The most notable win was probably the Golden Globe Awards gong.
From our counting, Byrne has won 15 awards for her performance so far!
It really does carry the film. With a script like this, you need someone to deliver and she did it big time. Although Bronstein’s screenplay was very sharp and well written, too (just everything about the film is dominated by Byrne). The plot was based on Bronstein’s struggles dealing with her severely ill 7-year-old daughter.
If I Had Legs I’d Kick You was shot in August and September of 2023 in Montauk of New York. Mary Bronstein waived her director’s fee to add just two extra days to the shoot, which was only 27 days long. A reminder that many in the film industry don’t earn that much, it’s only the big hitters who rake it in. Some are just there for the love of it.
