When we start at the beginning of Mary Bronstein's “If i had legs, i'd kick you“The therapist Lisa (Rose Byrne) sees at a group meeting, the camera moves along her face at such a close distance that it would be an understatement of a close -up. As she talks about her daughter's need for care, her dimples move, the brows keep putting together, the eyes themselves step out of the almost abysmal caves, as if they wanted to underline what was spoken. Your words express confidence, but your whole body actually signals all -round overwhelming.
Lisa's daughter, who will mostly be heard from the off -road in the course of the film and usually only appears briefly in the picture, sometimes a strand of hair, an ear, feet that dangle from the toilet, suffers from an unknown disease that requires it requires that it is connected to a gastric tube through which it is supplied. A large apparatus is necessary to create the pumping and moaning noise at night and your room dives in a nightmare light.
This is also why Lisa suffers from persistent insomnia, spends the time to dawn outdoors, drinks wine and turns joints – her husband, a naval captain (Cameo by Christian Slater), is hardly at home. But not even this already fragile arrangement keeps: One day water floods the attic of the house and breaks the train, tears a huge hole into the ceiling of the living room. Mother and daughter are forced to move into a hotel room and Lisa's spanned martyrdom only takes her real beginning.
Lisa (Rose Byrne) has actually been at the end – and yet there is still another catastrophe.
It took a total of 17 years before Mary Bronstein has now followed her directorial debut “Yeast” a new work. In 2008 she summed up the immediate intensity of the so-called Mumblecore cinema of that time, a wave of American independent films made with ultra-low-coded budgets, in Hyse-Nervous pictures. This was not only thanks to a feverish, largely spontaneous aesthetics, but also Bronstein's talent for almost painful direct performances-which also included that of the later “barbie” director Greta Gerwig in “Yeast”.
“If i had legs, I'm kick you” is also characterized by a reluctance to know a reluctance. The film drives the rushed byrne for almost two hours as if the story was immediately pushed out of its rhythm by a short pause. It is no longer very reminiscent of the films by Josh and Benny Safdie (with whom Bronstein has been close friends for many years), i.e. for example the manic survival energy of Robert Pattinson in “Good Time” or Adam Sandler in “The Blacks Diamond”.
Everything for overwhelming
Unfortunately, “if i had legs, i'd kick you” with these masterpieces of nervous gear and emotional sublime cannot keep pace. In addition, despite all the skilful kinetic frenzie, the film is simply overloaded and swearing in symbols: the camera repeatedly sinks into the shallows of the hole that is underlying, and to give meaningful kitchen psychological insights into a dismantled psyche, the flood of water in the apartment will When a shipwreck of emotional stability is overdetermined.
The film has to stretch again and again in order to keep the intensity that ultimately run into the empty intensity: one of Lisa's patient suddenly disappears during a session and leaves her baby in practice, an aggressive raging hamster causes a traffic chaos, A hotel guest played by the great rapper A $ ap rocky tries happily as a self -hurt craftsman. Only the former talk show moderator Conan O'Brien as a cool tense psychotherapist (“It is not a advice, it is a suggestion”) ensures a somewhat lower-meaning, comedic tone.
But nevertheless: Despite Rose Byrne's Spoiled Performance Performance, “If I Had Legs, I'd Kick You”, the core of the other after the other is conjured up from the hat, until the end nothing left.
Conclusion: In “If I Had Legs, I'd Kick” Mary Bronstein drives a mother played by Rose Byrne into an emotional state of emergency, which the film can only maintain with numerous tricks and kitchen psychological banalities.
We saw “if i had legs, i'd Kick” as part of the Berlinale 2025, where it was shown as part of the official competition.