The walls close in on Linda (Rosen Byrne), a therapist having the worst week of his life, in Mary Bronstein’s thrilling anxiety attack of a feature, “If I had legs I’d kick you. ” And the ceiling is also released.
In writer/director Bronstein’s second film (2008’s “Yeast”), Byrne gives what will go down as one of the year’s great screen performances, channeling Genea Rowlands In anguished close-up as a therapist whose sick daughter needs around the clock, whose apartment is flooded to destruction, and whose husband (Christian Slater) is nowhere to be found. This horror film of motherhood, which premiered at Sundance On Friday afternoon to a packed library mass comes to the festival with A24 Already in place as a distributor for later this year.
If it wasn’t, buyers would balk. Audiences were wowed and pummeled in equal measure by a film that has earned comparisons to “uncut gems” (another A24 title, and with overlap thanks to Josh Safdie as producer) as Byrne has a wine-and-weed-fueled nervous breakdown in two hours. The day’s most mundane frustrations, from hazing parking attendants to her hapless patients, become operative problems as Australian “injuries” and “bridesmaids” breakout Byrne delivers a career crowning achievement.
Before the lively, standing-room-only screening, Sundance head of programming Kim Yutani threw all but his opening remarks from the dais, while Bronstein urged the audience to forget what they went through today (and everything the world is going through) to) submit to his crazy vision. Applause was enthusiastic afterwards, but I heard a festival-goer behind me whisper “dark … disturbing” after the end credits before leaving the theater.
Joining Bronstein after the screening for a Q&A were Byrne and her co-star Conan O’Brien, whom A24 personally invited to read the script. He plays Linda’s miserable therapist and said he was surprised Byrne didn’t check himself into a hospital after production. (They had four weeks of intense rehearsals before filming took place on location in Montauk in late summer 2023.) Bronstein described the theme of the film and Linda’s drive as “I need help, I need help, I need help, but please don’t help me. After her apartment floods and a gaping hole opens in the ceiling, she is forced into a hotel with her daughter, who has always been connected to a machine with a tube in her stomach, a walkie-talk monitor beeping in Linda’s hands the whole time she have Nursing between therapy sessions and rushing to buy more wine from the check-in counter downstairs. More breakdowns and Past Trauma resurfacing to follow.
“I had a personal experience with my daughter, which I will not talk about in detail because it is her story to tell if she ever wants to tell it. I had never seen a film before where a mother goes through a crisis with the child, but our energy is not with the child’s struggle, it is with the mother’s struggle,” said Bronstein, whose film holds Linda’s daughter (Delaney Quinn) completely Out of frame until the last scene. Other co-stars include “Patti Cake$” breakout Danielle MacDonald as one of Linda’s patients, one whose maternal anguish begins to chillingly resemble that of Andrea Yates, the Texan with postpartum depression who was sentenced to life in prison in 2002 for drowning her five children. Vintage news clips of her sample thread all the time. A charmingly funny A$AP Rocky also plays Linda’s neighbor at the hotel, who takes a perverse fascination with this epically floundering working mom.
“It’s about having to function in the world while dealing with deep trauma that you don’t have time to bring out and actually give it,” Bronstein said.
“It was fascinating because she’s in this crisis, and I was like, ‘Who was she before?’ Who is that person? ‘ I was obsessed with it, who (she is) before this trauma. She’s already at the end of the road when we meet her, and it’s getting worse and worse,” Byrne said.
O’Brien said: “I’ve spent over 30 years talking to actors and artists. To see someone of Rose’s caliber do what she does, you see her do it once. I saw her do it 15 times … I don’t know how you did that and didn’t check into a hospital afterwards. I have not seen any actor, male or female, maintain that level for an entire film. I feel like I need to go to a hospital now because it’s the first time I’ve seen it. I’m a mess. “
Expect Byrne to be in the running for the award for a thrilling film that’s a challenging sit, the reason movies are built around an all-timer performance in the first place, and one that’s now the hottest ticket at Sundance. It’s only day two, but “If I Had Legs” just took the defibrillators to Park City.
“If I Had Legs I’d Kick You” premiered in 2025 Sundance Film Festival and will be released by A24 later this year.
