52 Films by Women Vol 9. 3. If I Had Legs I’d Kick You (Director: Mary Bronstein)

 

Pictured: Linda (Rose Byrne) in a scene from the white-knuckle comedy-drama, 'If I Had Legs, I'd Kick You', written and directed by Mary Bronstein. Still courtesy of Berlinale / A24 Films

A contemporary of Greta Gerwig and Sean Baker, writer-director Mary Bronstein is a graduate of the School of Safdie, Summa cum Lauda. That’s Josh and Benny Safdie, the writer-directors of Good Time, a film whose intensity Bronstein’s second feature, the uncompromisingly titled, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, mirrors. For almost two hours we are caught up in the whirlwind of therapist Linda’s daily routine, Bronstein fixing her camera on Linda’s face to the point where we can read her every thought. Rose Byrne gives a performance of which her work in recent comedies like Bad Neighbours does not prepare us. The film’s relentless pace, the use of sound, with horror movie-like jolts, flashbacks reached by way of journeys through time and space, the demands made of its heroine, reach a heightened level. If anyone tells you that a woman cannot make a film as visceral as any man’s, show them this. Bronstein leaves sentimentality in the stroller park.

Linda is prevailed upon by healthcare professionals. If she can’t get her young daughter to reach her weight target, then the hospital will need to review her care package. Linda’s husband travels for work – frequently and for good reason. He is not to be seen. Linda’s daughter (Delaney Quinn) is ever present but a voice off-camera. Bronstein doesn’t show her, but we hear her demands. In an early scene, Linda is carrying a pizza. The child doesn’t want cheese. Just then Linda trips over. The pizza overturns. Linda smiles as she opens the box. The topping is attached to the lid. No problem, no cheese. The child got what she wanted. Reaching home, Linda takes the pizza into the kitchen. The child races to the bathroom. She complains that the floor is wet. We see the girl’s socked feet suspended in the air. Linda notices water. She opens another door. Just then we hear a crash. There is a startlingly large hole in the ceiling. A hole that in future scenes looks vaginal, that has released a tidal wave, making the family home uninhabitable.

When we next see Linda (and hear her daughter), she is living in a hotel. She drops off her child at school. The child insists on being walked in. Linda is forced to double park. For the child, it is a game but also a reassuring routine. Linda falls foul of the parking marshal who leans into her side window and admonishes her. Linda drives away. We fear she isn’t paying attention to the road. Linda has a therapist (Conan O’Brien) who is reluctant to answer her questions. He can’t advise her. He can only help her to unpack her thoughts. In one session, she is silent. ‘You chose to come here,’ the therapist says testily.. Why is Linda spending time with another person and not speaking? O’Brien tilts his head to the right and looks like he’s channelling his inner Robin Williams (minus the beard) circa Good Will Hunting. Linda prevails upon him to listen to her dream. ‘Your time is up.’ ‘But you didn’t give me the warning. The ten-minute warning.’ ‘I have another patient.’ Linda wears him down. The dream involves the therapist. In it, he is tickling her, making her laugh. ‘We discuss it next time,’ the therapist says. ‘But we won’t,’ says Linda. ‘We never follow through.’ There is a punchline. Linda treats her own patients two doors down in an adjacent office. She has two patients. The first is Caroline (Danielle Macdonald), a recent mother who is obsessed by news reports of a woman who killed her child. Caroline’s baby, Riley – Baba O’Riley, to quote The Who song – doesn’t smile. ‘You have a child, don’t you?’ Caroline asks. ‘This isn’t about me,’ Linda tells her. Through these two scenes, we see the limits of therapy. It’s a one-way conversation where empathy is replaced by rationality – or nothing at all. Where a set of experiences is tested against itself. You beat your palms against the wall.

Linda’s second patient is Stephen (Daniel Zolghadri) a young man, whose tee shirt shows a curse word repeated several times. Stephen has dreams – thoughts – about his therapist, an unattainable object of desire. Linda doesn’t want to talk about herself. Therapy is also an attempt by the patient to chip away at the person listening. ‘I see what you’re doing,’ Linda’s therapist tells her. At one point, he breaks. At an earlier point, under her breath, Linda tells him that she loves him.

You could describe the film as a series of unwanted or testy conversations. Linda’s husband calls her to ask if she had visited the hole. The landlord’s contractor is working slowly. Linda attends to her daughter, awakened by the alarm of her monitor. She goes to reception to buy a bottle of wine. ‘I can’t sell you that,’ the receptionist, Diana (Ivy Wolk) tells her. ‘I can’t sell alcohol after 02:00am.’ ‘It’s 01:58,’ Linda tells her. ‘By the time, I ring it through, it’ll be 2:00 am’. On another occasion, ‘before 2:00am’, as Linda points out, she tries to buy wine. Diana asks for ID. ‘That’s the rule.’ ‘You know who I am,’ Linda pleads. ‘You want me to go upstairs, get ID and come down again.’ Ivy nods. James (A$AP Rocky), another hotel resident, offers to pay for it for her. ‘Then it would be your wine,’ says Diana. ‘Exactly.’ Linda walks out with the bottle of wine without paying. James chases after her, offers her a bottle opener. ‘I’m not interested,’ she tells him. However, he appeals to her. He uses the dark web to purchase illicit substances. Linda is interested, though only has a credit card. ‘You can’t pay with a credit card,’ James tells her, ‘it’s got to be anonymous.’ Linda stares at the screen. This is the dark web. Users go there to access child pornography. ‘I don’t know nothing about that,’ James explains. On a subsequent evening, Linda knocks on James’ door. A young woman answers. James isn’t in. ‘You have a message. I can take it,’ the young woman tells her. ‘It’s something of a value,’ Linda explains. ‘I’d prefer to give it to him myself.’

In one of the more intense sequences, the young mother Caroline follows up a late night, non-emergency call to Linda with an appointment. She declares that she needs to go to the bathroom. ‘You have fifteen minutes. You want to wait?’ ‘I have to go now.’ Caroline leaves the room. The baby basket is still in Linda’s office. Riley starts to cry. Linda can do little to appease the newborn, much less feed him. She leaves the room and pounds on the bathroom door. Caroline isn’t there. Linda checks a second bathroom. Caroline isn’t there either. She knocks on her therapist’s door. ‘I’m with a patient, I can’t help.’ The therapist moves to close the door. Linda prevents him from doing so. ‘No,’ he says with finality. Linda returns to her office. Riley is still crying. She finds Caroline’s emergency contact. He doesn’t know that Caroline is in therapy. ‘Come and collect Riley, I’ll text you my address.’ ‘I’m at work. Come and bring the baby here. I’ll text you my address,’ Riley’s father demands. They reach an impasse. Just then there is a knock at the door. Linda’s therapist comes in. He is furious. He is about to tell Linda what to do, breaking his therapist apathy. Then the office bell rings. It’s Stephen. He is there for his appointment. He enters the building, appears at Linda’s door. Linda’s therapist tells Stephen to wait in his office. The door is open. ‘But it is my time,’ Stephen says. Riley continues to cry. ‘Just wait in my office.’ Reluctantly, Stephen does so. In the next scene, the police arrive to collect the child. This is a situation officers have faced before.

Ratcheting up the drama still further, Linda and James visit the hole in her apartment, still not repaired. Then there’s an accident – and it looks bad. Bronstein paces her film like a comedy. But no one is laughing.

The film moves from one high drama set piece to the next, leaving audience will little time to breathe. Linda attends a therapy session in which the group leader sets out to discuss ‘blame and shame’ to tell a group of assembled mothers that it is not their fault. Only Linda cannot contain her derision. ‘Of course we’re to blame,’ she points out. The other mothers are aghast. ‘This is good,’ says the group leader, ‘we have something to discuss.’ ‘I’m leaving,’ insists Linda. ‘Do not leave,’ says the course leader. ‘You must not leave.’ But mere words are no use.

There is a resolution, every bit as intense as the scenes that preceded it. Some surprises too, when Linda makes a subsequent visit to the hole, she – and we see a figure in a uniform that we don’t expect. The drama builds to a point where Linda finds herself against an element.

You watch If I Had Legs I’d Kick You barely drawing breath. Linda leaves behind people in a daze and is left behind herself. She is driven to an act of liberation – and we gasp. What she does takes more time than we expect, but we understand her reasoning even as we flinch. At the end, we feel like this film is enough. You can’t imagine another film reaching a higher plain or achieving a greater effect.  You struggle for the words to describe your cinematic experience. I can muster no higher praise.

Reviewed at ‘Uber Eats’ Music Hall, East Berlin, Saturday 22 February 2025, 19:00 screening, Berlinale

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