by Digby Houghton
Worth: $17.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Berlin Film Festival
Cast:
Rose Byrne, Christian Slater, Conan O’Brien, Danielle Macdonald, Ella Beatty, Daniel Zolghardi, Ronald Bernstein, Delaney Quinn, A$AP Rocky, Ivy Wolk
Intro:
… brilliantly captured through the cinematography and editing and brought to life by Byrne’s evocative performance.
Bureaucracy is dictated by a chain of command going from the bottom to the top, and vice versa. If the people in positions of power cannot communicate with those below them, chaos ensues. In such instances, responsibility tends to be relegated again and again, to people with decreasing amounts of power. A similar dynamic is at the centre of Mary Bronstein’s latest film, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, about the overwhelming responsibilities of motherhood and how to deal with trauma.
The film opens on the middle-aged face of Linda, played by Rose Byrne in a rare dramatic role. Soon, we cut to an extreme closeup of her eyeball, a level of intimacy sustained throughout most of the film. A medical professional offscreen is heard explaining to Linda that her daughter (Delaney Quinn) needs to put on weight. The child in question is heard but never seen in the film, a throttling two-hour ride following Linda as she struggles to keep it together.
Linda is a practicing therapist seeing a range of clients, including young mother Caroline (Danielle Macdonald), self-identifying “zoomer” Kate (Ella Beatty), and a boy named Stephen (Daniel Zolghardi). It soon becomes clear, however, that Linda is in no position to listen or give advice, as the ongoing pain of her daughter’s worsening health plagues her. During meetings with clients, she struggles to switch off her phone, incessantly taking calls from medical professionals about her child. Linda’s husband Charles (Christian Slater), for his part, is similarly overworked, and rarely home.
In Linda’s life, the main chain of command that she must respond to is in her relationship with one of the practising psychiatrists at her work, in a strong, albeit unrecognisable role, from Conan O’Brien. Their regular appointments give her a kind of respite from the bedlam of her daily life, but frequently dissolve into bickering and arguing or, at times, simply silence. Even with this much support and help, Linda cannot remain sane. Her uncooperative relationship with her therapist is a painful irony, showing that one can have all the resources in the world and still not know how to cope.
If I Had Legs I’d Kick You at times recalls the minutiae of Robert Bresson’s humanistic films, with their ability to snowball the most minute contrivances into ever more tragic circumstances. This resemblance is most striking when, one evening, Linda arrives home to find her entire ceiling flooded, forcing her and her daughter to relocate to a motel down the street. Working at the hotel’s front desk are the ebullient James (A$AP Rocky) and the brash Diana (Ivy Wolk), who lampoon Linda by denying her wine from the fridge and tease her for not looking after her daughter.
A particularly harrowing scene occurs when a baby is left abandoned in Linda’s office. Instead of resorting to her motherly instincts, Linda grows angry as the baby loses control before calling the police demanding that they return the baby. This scene evokes the Safdie Brothers high-stake thrillers Uncut Gems and Good Time — undeniable influences, as Bronstein chose Good Time cameraman Christopher Messina to do the cinematography here. Her husband Ronald Bernstein, who stars as Caroline’s husband, also co-wrote Uncut Gems. The densely saturated pop colours in the film, infused with hazy blue and red tones, dapple the characters and give the film a 1970s Americana roughness.
The decision to shoot on 35mm affords a rare luxurious feel to the image and pays homage to the supernatural gothicism of directors like Roman Polanski, whose films like Repulsion and Rosemary’s Baby likewise deal with feminism in a nuanced way. If Linda so desperately wants to help others, why is it that she cannot help herself or those closest to her?
These questions hover over the film, which offers no easy answers. Struggling to let go of the chaos in her life, Linda has trouble taking responsibility for her actions. She is plagued by guilt whenever she leaves her daughter, yet remains attached to her through a small radio like an umbilical cord.
Rose Byrne rose to fame with roles in films such as Troy, before earning her reputation as a star of bro-comedies like Bad Neighbours, Get Him to the Greek and critical hits like Bridesmaids. Rarely is she afforded the opportunity to play a lead character with such flair and honesty as she does here, and she more than rises to the occasion. Every scene is centred around Linda’s cataclysmic spiral, and Byrne captures her decline with strength and humility.
Therapy requires two people to be in a dialogue so that they can overcome an issue or a problem. If one person is talking and the other isn’t listening, resolution cannot be reached. If I Had Legs I’d Kick You reveals, behind the frustration and pain felt by its protagonist, a severe case of communication breakdown. Linda’s inability to communicate her ongoing problems allows chaos to overwhelm her life and distracts her from what is present – namely, looking after her daughter. This sense of chaos and unease is brilliantly captured through the cinematography and editing and brought to life by Byrne’s evocative performance.
