Release Date – 20th February 2026, Cert – TBC, Run-time – 1 hour 53 minutes, Director – Mary Bronstein
Linda (Rose Byrne) is struggling to stay afloat, looking after her sick daughter (Delaney Quinn) as their home falls apart, while her therapist (Conan O’Brien) doesn’t seem to take her seriously.
Linda is dead behind the eyes. It’s a look that Rose Byrne has mastered in If I Had Legs I’d Kick You. Hers is a performance that, alongside the film as a whole, understands the feeling of being depressed and tired and empty. The world is piling down on her and she’s struggling to stay afloat. The posters in her office, where she works as a therapist, reading “it always seems impossible until it’s done.” seem desperately unencouraging.
For Linda, ‘it’ relates to her whole life falling apart – much like her home. The ceiling of one of the rooms in her apartment has fallen in causing the place to flood, moving out until it’s fixed, a time that appears to be constantly pushed, into a nearby motel. With her husband (Christian Slater) away, she’s left to look after her young, ill daughter (Delaney Quinn – never properly seen, only heard). As she tells her own therapist (a withering, dramatic turn from Conan O’Brien) about how everything seems to be closing in on her, barely staying afloat, she’s met with an unsympathetic response.
The pressure at hand, and Linda’s increasing lack of energy to deal with things as she’s pushed and pulled in multiple directions, leads to a number of difficult-to-watch scenes. Whether missing meetings at medical centres or one instance where she’s talking to a client of hers over the phone unease creeps in, further fuelling the breakdown that appears to be central to the film. There’s an underlying fear and tension to almost everything that happens once the elements are set up, even hidden behind the dark humour which raises an occasional scattered chuckle. This mixture of tones, all accompanying the psychological drama at hand, caught by Byrne’s increasingly exasperated performance – unquestionably deserving of the awards attention that’s been quietly growing over the last few weeks.
“I’ll be better, I promise I can be better” she tells herself as much as anyone else. She wants to try and wants to be better, but at the same time needs some form of break and escape. Just a moment to lie down. However, these can create further problems down the line. Writer-director Mary Bronstein’s screenplay could enter into territory similar to The Lost Daughter, or the anxiety of Uncut Gems, but successfully avoids it by focusing on the constantly tired yet trying attitude that Linda has, and not involving historical regret.
A state that’s captured in the overall tone and style of the film and grows the tension at hand. The worry for other characters who trust in Linda, partly stemmed through her own want to help. And yet, the world and everything that could possibly cause further anxiety and worry continues to beat down. Everything leads to more trouble and mental exhaustion with little help or listening ears. This is a film about tiredness and emptiness that’s got plenty of weighty spark in its ideas.
Perfectly capturing a tired depression, Rose Byrne commands If I Had Legs I’d Kick You as her character struggles to stay afloat in a film that manages to do so amongst a lot of tense worry from multiple angles.
Just A Little Bit Random 