If I Had Legs I’d Kick You follows Linda, a mother drowning in the isolating depths of postpartum struggles and maternal anxiety. Despite being surrounded by family, she feels utterly alone, trapped in her own spiraling mind. The film is an unflinching portrait of a woman at breaking point, desperately searching for solid ground in an ocean of overwhelming responsibility and invisible pain.
Rose Byrne delivers a career-defining performance that fully justifies her Golden Globe win. She doesn’t just play Linda, she becomes her, embodying every exhausted breath, every frayed nerve, every moment of soul-crushing loneliness that motherhood can bring. Byrne is raw, broken, knackered, and devastatingly authentic, refusing to soften the edges of a character who’s barely holding on. It’s the kind of performance that makes you uncomfortable because it feels too real, too close to the bone.
ASAP Rocky appears as well, doing a job. He’s serviceable in his role but exists more as a presence than a fully realised character, which may very well be intentional given the film’s perspective. Conan also is decent with his interactions.
Director Mary Bronstein makes bold, deliberate choices that transform this from a standard character study into something genuinely innovative. The cinematography is nothing short of brilliant. Linda’s family members are kept faceless, their features obscured or out of frame for nearly the entire runtime. We see her interact with them, hear their voices, watch her respond, but we never truly see them until the final five minutes. It’s an incredibly effective technique that places us directly inside Linda’s headspace, experiencing her isolation even in a crowded room. You feel how she’s trapped in her own mind, how present yet absent she is with those around her.
Linda’s anxiety manifests through dream sequences that are genuinely unsettling and uncomfortable, which feels entirely accurate. The creative team employs disorienting lights, jarring colours, and distorted shapes to visualise her mental state, making these moments viscerally unnerving rather than artistically pretty. The sound design and score enhance this oppressive atmosphere, creating a film that feels claustrophobic and relentless in the best possible way.
This is complex character study filmmaking at its finest… gritty, raw, and uncompromising in its authenticity. The film doesn’t offer easy answers or tidy resolutions because life doesn’t work that way, especially when you’re battling invisible demons while the world expects you to just cope.
Important note: This film absolutely requires a trigger warning. It deals with heavy themes including suicidal ideation and maternal mental health crises that could deeply affect viewers, particularly parents. There’s a particularly powerful scene where Linda attempts to drown herself in the sea, only for the waves to keep washing her back to shore… a brutal metaphor for feeling rejected even by death itself, too broken to live but unable to die. It’s devastating cinema.
The narrative doesn’t follow traditional plot beats. Instead, it’s an immersive experience of one woman’s psychological unraveling, and it demands your patience and emotional investment. Some viewers might find it too heavy, too slow, too uncomfortable and that’s entirely fair. This isn’t entertainment; it’s an endurance test that mirrors Linda’s own experience.
What makes the film truly special is its refusal to romanticise or sanitise motherhood’s darkest corners. It shows how you can be surrounded by people who love you and still feel completely alone. How you can go through the motions while your inner world collapses. How invisible suffering can be when it happens behind closed doors and forced smiles.
If I Had Legs I’d Kick You is challenging, uncomfortable, and not for everyone but it’s also important, truthful, and anchored by one of the year’s most powerful performances.
