If I Had Legs I'd Kick You
2025 film by Mary Bronstein
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If I Had Legs I'd Kick You is a 2025 American psychological drama film written and directed by Mary Bronstein. It stars Rose Byrne as a mother who, as a result of continuously confronting a large amount of obstacles, spirals into a mental breakdown. Conan O'Brien and A$AP Rocky are among the supporting cast.
- Sara Murphy
- Ryan Zacarias
- Ronald Bronstein
- Josh Safdie
- Eli Bush
- Conor Hannon
- Richie Doyle
| If I Had Legs I'd Kick You | |
|---|---|
Theatrical release poster | |
| Directed by | Mary Bronstein |
| Written by | Mary Bronstein |
| Produced by |
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| Starring | |
| Cinematography | Christopher Messina |
| Edited by | Lucian Johnston |
Production companies |
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| Distributed by | A24 |
Release dates |
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Running time | 113 minutes[1] |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Box office | $1.7 million[2][3] |
The film had its world premiere at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival, and was released domestically by A24 on October 10. If I Had Legs I'd Kick You was received favorably among critics. Byrne's performance in the film received universal acclaim, earning her the Silver Bear for Best Leading Performance, an Independent Spirit Award for Best Lead Performance and a Golden Globe Award, alongside nominations for the Critics' Choice Award, Actor Award, BAFTA Award and Academy Award for Best Actress.[4]
Plot
Linda is a psychotherapist stretched to her limits while caring for her clingy, anxious daughter, who has a pediatric feeding disorder that necessitates nightly supplemental nourishment through a feeding tube and participation in a day hospital program that Linda drives her to and from every day. Linda's husband, Charles, is away at work as a ship's captain.
The family's situation worsens when their Montauk apartment is flooded after the ceiling collapses. Linda and their daughter move into a shabby motel. There, Linda meets an insolent clerk, Diana, and the superintendent, Jamie. Linda struggles to sleep due to the noise from her daughter's feeding pump. She spends sleep-deprived nights outside the motel room, drinking wine, smoking cannabis, listening to music, and eating junk food. She also leaves the motel to check on the apartment repairs, which have been left in limbo by the contractor's sudden departure.
Professionally, Linda is surrounded by difficult and demanding clients, including Caroline, a new mother suffering from paranoia and postpartum anxiety. Linda also seeks therapy from a colleague, who is increasingly exasperated by her lack of professional boundaries. When Charles calls to check in on Linda, he is critical and unsupportive, saying he wishes he could "sit around all day" as a therapist. Her daughter's hospital program doctor reprimands Linda for frequently missing family therapy sessions. She tells Linda that if her daughter does not meet her weight goal by the end of the week, her level of care will be "reassessed" — it is never made explicitly clear what this means. Linda feels she is being set up to fail, and that her daughter will not eat more as long as she is using the feeding tube.
During a therapy session, Caroline abandons her son in Linda's office. Linda unsuccessfully tries to get her therapist colleague to help her. She then calls Caroline‘s husband and asks him to pick up his son. He refuses to leave work to do so, forcing her to call the police.
One night, Jamie offers to help Linda buy drugs on the dark web and offers her daughter emotional support. Linda eventually brings him to her apartment to look at the collapsed ceiling, due to his experience in general contracting. He falls through the damaged floor and breaks his leg. Linda flees the scene after calling an ambulance for Jamie.
After being told that her daughter cannot reach the necessary weight for her feeding tube to be removed, Linda causes a scene at the hospital program's group meeting for mothers in her situation when the doctor upsets her by telling the group that their children's illnesses are not their fault. Linda tells her therapist she aborted her first pregnancy years before having her daughter, and cries about her failings as a mother. He tells her he can no longer be her therapist. Caroline appears one night at the motel lobby during a mental health crisis, asking for Linda. Linda tries to convince her to go to an emergency room. Caroline slaps her and runs away. Linda runs after her, but loses her on a nearby beach.
Returning to the motel, Linda removes her daughter's feeding tube and has a hallucination of the surgical hole closing. Returning to her apartment, she discovers that Charles has suddenly come home and has had the hole in the ceiling repaired. Linda and Charles return to the motel room where she has left their daughter alone to find Jamie, who heard the girl panicking and came in to calm her down. Charles sees that Linda has removed the feeding tube, and she flees to the beach, repeatedly running into the surf and being thrown back ashore. Linda wakes on the sand with her daughter beside her, the child's face visible for the first time in the film. She promises she will "be better" and her daughter smiles.
Cast
- Rose Byrne as Linda[5]
- Conan O'Brien as Linda's therapist
- Danielle Macdonald as Caroline, one of Linda's patients
- Delaney Quinn as Linda's daughter
- Christian Slater as Charles, Linda's husband[6]
- ASAP Rocky as Jamie, a motel superintendent
- Ivy Wolk as Diana, a motel clerk
- Mary Bronstein as Dr. Spring
- Lark White as Vanessa
- Daniel Zolghadri as Stephen, one of Linda's patients
- Ella Beatty as Kate, one of Linda's patients
- Mark Stolzenberg as a clinic parking attendant
- Ronald Bronstein as Caroline's husband
- Helen Hong as Eva
- Amy Judd Lieberman as Melanie
- Josh Pais as Brad
- Manu Narayan as Landlord
- Eva Kornet as herself
Production
If I Had Legs I'd Kick You began filming in August[7] and September 2023[8] in Montauk, New York, after SAG-AFTRA granted an interim agreement for the film during the actors' strike.[9] The film was shot over 27 days, with Bronstein giving up her director's fee to obtain two additional shooting days. Due to the film's limited budget, Bronstein and the director of photography recorded its surrealist elements during post-production.[10]
The film was Bronstein's first movie since her 2008 debut, Yeast. She said she wrote the film as a means of processing the trauma she experienced while caring for her 7-year-old daughter, who was suffering from severe health problems at the time.[11]
Release
If I Had Legs I'd Kick You premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on January 24, 2025.[12] It had its international premiere in February 2025 at the 75th Berlin International Film Festival in competition for the Golden Bear.[13][14] Byrne won the Silver Bear for Best Leading Performance.[15] It screened at the 52nd Telluride Film Festival,[16] the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival,[17] the 2025 New York Film Festival,[18] and the 2025 BFI London Film Festival.[19] It was released by A24 on October 10, 2025.[20]
If I Had Legs I'd Kick You also screened in the Best of 2025 section of the 20th Rome Film Festival in October 2025.[21]
The first physical releases on Blu-ray and DVD were in Canada on December 23, 2025.[22]
Reception
Critical reception
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 92% of 190 critics' reviews are positive. The website's consensus reads: "Liable to leave audiences in a cold sweat, this fever dream immersion into parental stress connects with thunderous force thanks to Rose Byrne's gutsy star turn and director Mary Bronstein's uncompromising vision."[23] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 77 out of 100, based on 34 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.[24]
Critics praised Byrne's performance, with Jeanette Catsoulis of The New York Times and Glenn Whipp of the Los Angeles Times calling it "magnificent".[25][26] David Fear of Rolling Stone wrote, "[Byrne] is particularly on-point here, the sort of exquisitely raw, white-knuckle performance that feels so voyeuristic and personal that, if you had any decency, you'd look away. She ensures that you can't".[27]
Many writers compared the film favorably to Uncut Gems. Stephanie Zacharek of Time called it "Uncut Gems for moms". Zacharek and Whipp respectively pointed out Bronstein's husband is a frequent collaborator with the Safdie brothers and that Josh Safdie is one of the film's producers. Additionally, Ronald Bronstein appears in a voice-only cameo.[26][28]
