How DO you juggle it all? Mothers tend to get asked that question — often in a chipper tone, expecting a chipper response. Rarely do those asking stick around to hear that perhaps those juggling balls are hovering precariously, about to crash to the ground.
One senses that Linda, the overburdened mom embodied by a brave and committed Rose Byrne in Mary Bronstein’s “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You,” would freely expand on that — if anyone cared. But Linda is nobody’s priority.
She’s certainly not her husband’s priority; a cruise captain, he phones in from afar, checking that she’s properly caring for their ill child and freely admonishing her when she’s not. A working therapist, she’s certainly not the priority of her patients in various stages of crisis.
She’s also not the priority of doctors supervising her daughter’s illness — an eating disorder so severe that the child needs a feeding tube. Even the contractor who’s allegedly fixing that hole in Linda’s ceiling puts her at the bottom of the list.
Grasping all this in the early scenes, we suddenly understand two bold creative decisions Bronstein makes, in only her second feature as director. The first: Her camera rests close — excruciatingly close — on Byrne’s face throughout. It’s as if to say, nobody else is paying attention to her, but we sure will.
Second, and most radically: We hear Linda’s child but do not see her. At first this feels uncomfortable, even frustrating. But Bronstein has explained it simply: The moment you see a child’s face, that’s where your empathy goes (especially a sick one). In fact, this child, played by a sweet-voiced Delaney Quinn, is not even named. This movie’s about Linda, remember?
Thus, it is Linda’s face alone — in such severe close-up that we could be inside her very pores — that we first see. She’s in a tense meeting with her child and their doctor (played by a stern Bronstein herself.) Linda desperately wants the feeding tube removed. The doctor says the girl must reach a target weight first.
The tube will become, of course, both a physical and emotional tether — and a symbol of the guilt Linda feels at being unable to solve this crisis.
Heck, she can’t even handle arranging repairs to the gaping abyss at home. Her bedroom’s ceiling has collapsed just before the opening credits, forcing mother and daughter into a crummy beachside motel. (The location is in the Hamptons on Long Island, not all corners of which are glamorous.) This ugly hole will serve, just like the feeding tube, as a portal to something much bigger and even fantastical.
Arguing with the repair guy, Linda screams into a pillow in despair. One would think such things as damaged property — or a nasty parking attendant, who also drives Linda mad — would be minuscule compared to the agony of a sick child. But for Linda, the big and the small conflate. There’s no longer any perspective of scale.
Perhaps this is why, barely able to focus on herself, Linda also badly mismanages one of her patients — a new mother (Danielle Macdonald, excellent) in full-on, scary postpartum depression.
The only person Linda can vent to is her own therapist, played by, yes, Conan O’Brien, in his dramatic acting debut. For once, and on purpose, O’Brien is the farthest thing from funny — a sour man unable to help Linda out of her spiraling mess. (Speaking of a spiraling mess, there are definite echoes of “Uncut Gems” — that film’s co-director, Josh Safdie, is a producer here — and its propulsive journey into madness.)
Perhaps the only clearly thinking person in the whole film is James, the motel handyman, who actually likes Linda and tries to help. A$AP Rocky has an easy charisma in the role, but Linda is incapable of focusing on him, or anyone else.
And that includes her child. Even though her days are devoted to the girl, shuttling her to appointments and filling that infuriating tube, we sense that Linda, amid the chaos, has forgotten what her offspring looks like. It’s surely another fundamental reason that Bronstein chooses not to show the child’s face.
Byrne’s face, though, it is hard to forget, as it registers fatigue, frustration, fury and everything in between. The film is a wonderful collaboration between her and writer-director Bronstein, who drew inspiration from her own experiences with motherhood.
It also has given Byrne, an actor of effortless appeal in lighter films, a chance to display versatility and grit in surely the toughest dramatic role of her career.
“If I Had Legs I’d Kick You,” an A24 release, has been rated R by the Motion Picture Association “for language, some drug use and bloody images.” Running time: 113 minutes. Three stars out of four.
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