If I Had Legs I'd Kick You (2025)
Directed by Mary Bronstein
With her life crashing down around her, Linda attempts to navigate her child's mysterious illness, her absent husband, a missing person, and an increasingly hostile relationship with her therapist.
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27 films that influenced If I Had Legs I'd Kick You
What critics say influenced If I Had Legs I'd Kick You
Director
Josh Safdie
Critics invoke Safdie by name, and compare If I Had Legs I'd Kick You to 2 of Safdie’s films.
Visuals
On Safdie, rather than any one film
…the propulsive downward spirals of the Safdies (Josh Safdie is a producer here)…
It’s understandably drawing comparisons to things like Uncut Gems, mother!, We Need to Talk About Kevin, and The Babadook, and rightfully so.
It’s easy to classify this as Uncut Gems or Marty Supreme for middle-aged moms.
Compared to the Safdie brothers’ Uncut Gems, it certainly harbours the same New York freneticism…
In the most stressful movie since Uncut Gems, Rose Byrne gives the single best performance I've seen all year.
Sort of like if Uncut Gems ended with a much-needed therapy session.
Before having kids, see this movie about a married single mom given the “Uncut Gems” (2019) treatment.
It’s easy to classify this as Uncut Gems or Marty Supreme for middle-aged moms.
If I had any reservations about Marty Supreme, it was about the maleness of the film; Josh Safdie directed the Timothee Chalamet hit, but also produced this powerful, female-centred movie, and that double-bill of good movies is a rare achievement.
The story reminds me of Nightbitch, where Amy Adams plays a worn-out mom going through a nervous breakdown, but Byrne’s character, Linda, is in an even crazier situation.
Others may view it as a companion piece to the similarly themed film NIGHT BITCH from filmmaker Marielle Heller last year.
…will be compared to the prickly motherhood films that came before it, from The Lost Daughter to last year’s underrated Nightbitch. While they share similar themes, none are as unrelenting and brutal.
…as we’ve seen the attempt of last year’s Nightbitch…
…that sounds like “Nightbitch” in which harried new mom Amy Adams turns into a feral dog. Nah. “Nightbitch” lost its nerve real quick.
…from The Lost Daughter to last year’s underrated Nightbitch…
On Lynch, rather than any one film
The only bits that don’t quite land are the film’s almost Lynchian take on the hole in Linda’s ceiling.
…the film’s almost Lynchian take on the hole in Linda’s ceiling…
…will be compared to the prickly motherhood films that came before it, from The Lost Daughter to last year’s underrated Nightbitch. While they share similar themes, none are as unrelenting and brutal.
…will be compared to the prickly motherhood films that came before it, from The Lost Daughter to last year’s underrated Nightbitch…
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Linda bears plenty of similarities to another character that Byrne recently played: Physical’s Sheila Rubin, a bulimic mother with a daughter that she, too, is constantly tasked with “watching.”
It’s almost impossible to watch this film as a fan of Byrne’s without thinking back to her most recent TV role in the Apple TV+ series Physical. The camera spent so much time close up on her face throughout that series, and it once again occupies the majority of the frame for most of this movie. The result is different, however, since Linda is not nearly as expressive, and when she is, it’s usually to channel anger at whoever might be in her orbit (most of them do deserve it). And while Linda doesn’t have an unhealthy relationship with food like Sheila did on Physical, she does stuff an entire slice of cheeseless pizza in her mouth at the beginning of the film, indicating a resigned mentality to the fact that she doesn’t have any control over her life.
…we’ve seen Rose Byrne portray a struggling mother battling body image demons in 1980s-set series Physical.
Byrne has long mastered the art of self-loathing and performative pleasantries (see her Apple TV+ series Physical for a masterclass), but she’s operating on another level here.
Not even one Emmy nominations in the three seasons of PHYSICAL on Apple TV +.
There have been very unfair and unjust comparisons to John Cassavetes’s A Woman Under the Influence (1974), which seem to forget that the central woman character of that movie isn’t someone who needs to be solved, but understood.
Anchoring a story that’s somewhere between the propulsive downward spirals of the Safdies (Josh Safdie is a producer here) and the surrealism of Enter The Void…
It’s understandably drawing comparisons to things like Uncut Gems, mother!, We Need to Talk About Kevin, and The Babadook, and rightfully so.
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On Coen, rather than any one film
…or a chaotic Coen Brothers caper…
On Coen, rather than any one film
…or a chaotic Coen Brothers caper…