If I Had Legs I’d Kick You

As someone who has enjoyed Rose Byrne’s work in film for nearly twenty years, it is exciting that the stars seem to be aligning for the Australian actress. Familiar to American moviegoers from her work in comedies like Bridesmaids, Neighbors, and Get Him to the Greek was well as X-Men: First Class and the Blumhouse horror franchise Insidious, Byrne has consistently impressed with her range and presence without ever getting an opportunity to shine or be celebrated as the star she should be. Maybe that changes with If I Had Legs, I’d Kick You, a psychological indie dramedy that premiered at Sundance in January and is presently being rolled out by A24 to awards buzz.

This should be the moment Byrne and her fans have been awaiting for far too long: that chance to shine and become a household name for more than professional moviegoers. Unfortunately, the moment is lost on me because Byrne’s very good performance as a harried mother and therapist occurs in a meandering movie that is just so-so.

Picking up her second feature credit and her first in seventeen years, writer-director Mary Bronstein tells the story of Linda (Byrne), a New Yorker who has her hands full with a young daughter battling a mystery illness that requires a feeding tube and frequent medical attention. This would be a stressful time for any mother at any time, but Linda’s life seems especially challenging because her husband is away as some kind of sea captain and the couple’s old apartment has just sprung a colossal hole in its ceiling.

While the hole is slowly repaired, Linda and her daughter are staying in a not particularly nice hotel. On top of the dramas of work that finds her listening to the stressful problems of troubled individuals, Linda’s life is coming apart from the demands of her daughter, which requires daily check-ins at a hospital with an inhospitable parking lot. Linda copes with wine, weed, and her own strained therapy sessions with her mentor-turned-colleague (Conan O’Brien).

Byrne commands the screen, following in the footsteps of Charlize Theron (Tully) and Amy Adams (Nightbitch) as she personifies the unglamorous and near-overwhelming trials of motherhood. In this case, Byrne doesn’t have to share the screen with a night nurse or a canine counterpart or even her sick daughter, whom Bronstein deliberately and frustratingly keeps offscreen for nearly the film’s entirety.

That is merely one of the bigger creative decisions you’ll question here as the film gradually chips away at the empathy Byrne’s full-throttled performance generates. Although it’s classified as a comedy and generates a few funny moments throughout (one involving a bitey hamster), more often Kick You plays like a surreal nightmare. Linda finds comfort nowhere, not in the concerned doctor (Bronstein herself) trying to get Linda’s daughter’s recovery on schedule, not in the hotel worker/neighbor (rapper A$AP Rocky) who tries to get her to fund illegal drug Internet purchases with prepaid gift cards, not in the absentee husband (a barely on-camera Christian Slater) pressuring her to visit their apartment and document its repair progress (or lack thereof).

Unpleasantness abounds and we can’t help but share in Linda’s pain as she looks for relief in so many different places and comes up empty in every way. The lack of compassion from her fellow therapist especially stings, given that the part is played as one of the first real acting gigs of beloved longtime talk show host Conan O’Brien, who has never before been this off-putting and cold. Bronstein’s script demonstrates that the filmmaker is aware of a number of ways in which modern living is taxing, but there is disappointingly little in the way of answers or growth. It is a movie that leaves you feeling worse than when you started and while that alone is not enough to write it off, I just couldn’t find much to redeem the abundance of negativity and minimum of joy.

Byrne does everything the movie asks of her and as well as anyone could. The performance is no revelation or surprise to someone who’s seen the actress in over thirty movies dating back to Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones. Some of her better work has come in movies that are not as well known as they should be, like The Place Beyond the Pines, The Meddler, and Juliet, Naked, movies whose final worldwide grosses pale to a domestic opening weekend or two of mainstream performers like Knowing and Spy. A first Oscar nomination for Best Actress seems well in reach for Byrne, although sadly, that’s partly because there’s rarely more than a dozen lead female performances in genuine conversation any modern year. Byrne is one of the few potential first-time nominees in the running and the one most likely to be labeled an “overdue” veteran than a “up-and/new-comer.”

An Oscar nomination would raise the profile of this film, which is a big deal in the fall in which movies for adults cannot catch a break. But if Tully and Nightbitch came away with little more than a nomination in the Golden Globes’ designated Actress in a Musical or Comedy category, I’m not sure this lesser film with less mainstream appeal fares much better.