If I Had Legs, I’d Kick You (2025)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

If I Had Legs, I’d Kick You (2025) – M. Bronstein

Rose Byrne has been nominated for the Best Actress Oscar and this film is entirely hers.  It’s also a return to directing for Mary Bronstein after 15 or so years off.  Bronstein (who also plays a small role as a pediatric doctor) tends to keep the camera tightly framed around Byrne who plays Linda, a therapist at the end of her rope, coping with a seriously ill young daughter, a husband away on a work trip, a handful of peculiar clients, an awkward relationship with her own therapist (played by Conan O’Brien), and a burst pipe/mysterious hole in the ceiling of her apartment that has left her living out of a cheap motel. To say the film is chaotic and intense might be an understatement – there may need to be a warning to anyone suffering anxiety to avoid it.  It’s impossible to do anything other than to let the film’s cascading hassles wash over you. Byrne has our sympathy/empathy even when she doesn’t seem to act in her own best interest. At one point, she states that she’s the type of person who never should have become a mother -- but viewers might be right to question this and instead ponder whether the circumstances of her life might overwhelm anyone. If some of this is intended to be “dark comedy” (when some events are too ludicrous to believe), it is dark indeed.  Kudos to Rose Byrne.