How bad was the worst day you’ve ever had?
Expand it by five, set it in the “townie” section of Montauk at a seedy motel, tack on a host of needy therapy patients and an emotional affair, then add a child who is uniquely unwell with a long-term disorder for whom you are sole caretaker. This will only begin to look like Mary Bronstein’s stunning and confrontational film “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You.”
Led by what many have tipped as a career-best performance from Rose Byrne, the film jolted awake a subdued Sundance Film Festival earlier this year upon its world premiere. Byrne plays Linda, a struggling shrink whose boat captain husband (Christian Slater) has absconded on a luxury charter, leaving her in charge of their young daughter – one battling disordered eating issues and strapped to a feeding apparatus, but as willful and ornery as any early elementary school kid.
Yes, this is a movie about a woman on the verge, both the star and director agree. But it is not delivered in the grandest convention of that niche genre – as made by men.
“I wanted to express a specific feeling of being a woman yelling into the ether with rage, one trying to carry on with a feeling that the universe is against her. There’s a tradition of films about women coming undone, but most of them are written and directed by men,” Bronstein told Variety recently as her film powered through successful premieres at festivals in Telluride and Toronto. “Incredible women bring life to those characters with amazing performances, but I wanted to do something that was radically from the female experience.”
Radical, indeed. “If I Had Legs,” which hails from A24, arrived in Park City with an enticing sort of danger that Emerald Fennell brought in 2020 with her eventual Oscar contender “Promising Young Woman” – in that its distinctly female voice does not ask permission to tell truths (in Bronstein’s case about the pressure of motherhood, the endurance of trauma and the black comedy that arises when one’s life is completely falling apart). And, like Fennell, Bronstein certainly doesn’t care about your forgiveness.
Here, Byrne and Bronstein discuss the film’s complicated emotional effect on audiences and the audacity of hyper-specific cinema.
Love Film & TV?
Get your daily dose of everything happening in music, film and TV in Australia and abroad.
How easy is it to get a film like “If I Had Legs” made right now?
MARY BRONSTEIN: The struggle of this movie was a creative one, not a commercial one. My theory is, the more specific you get, the more people can find themselves and engage. Because if something is for everybody, it’s for nobody. It’s almost counterintuitive. I started writing the movie to pull myself out an existential crisis that I was going through. To express feelings that women carry all the time. Like the feeling of not being listened to, not being believed, being gaslit, being told that you don’t know what’s best for yourself – and assuming that because you gave birth to another human being, you always know what to do. But there’s an absurdity, as well. Like when things are already bad and then your pencil breaks and it’s like, “What the fuck?” It’s a difficult movie in that it asks a lot of the audience, but it asks to work with them instead of hinge on hope. This is not a movie that holds your hand.
ROSE BYRNE: Things like this don’t typically come my way. There’s not a lot of scripts written for women around our age. Stories that showcase you as a real person, not an appendage on another character, nothing meaty. This was extraordinary.
BRONSTEIN: I wanted Rose for her impeccable comedic talent, but she’s proper, serious technical actor as well. To be able to get tears on the heels of a laugh is really fucking rare. And Rose is a beloved actor, which I needed. I’m taking the viewer to some places that are hard, so I needed someone who – even subconsciously – makes the audience feel comfortable, someone they feel kindness toward.
Rose, the camera is this close to your face in the film. It’s a never-ending stress test, but it works so well.
BYRNE: [Nods head, widens eyes].
BRONSTEIN: We shot on film, which was very important to me and caused a lot of sacrifice with my budget. I wanted this to feel grungy. The bad version of this film is slick and clean. My brilliant cinematographer, Christopher Messina, understood and we were in such lockstep with each other. He either held the camera, or it was on a tripod. I didn’t want to use zoom lenses. It really speaks to Rose’s talent. You can physically hear the film camera capturing the frame, and it didn’t shake her. It was inches from her face.
When I saw this in Sundance, I sat next to a woman I didn’t know. By the end, we were just holding hands. On my way out, another woman – same age – was quite upset about the journey the fictional little girl takes in this film. What would you say to either?
BYRNE: We had a similar situation come up at one of our Q&A’s, and I think the answer is … it’s none of my business how people feel about it. We just know the film asks a lot of them.
BRONSTEIN: Both of those responses are correct, if that’s how it made them feel. That’s a win, either way. You want the audience to walk away feeling something.
How have men reacted to a story like this? None of the male characters, save for one, really ease Linda’s burden.
BRONSTEIN: A lot of men relate very deeply to the [Christian Slater’s] character. When a partner is going through distress, men have told me “I feel helpless. I don’t know what to do. I want to solve the problem, but they don’t want me to solve the problem. Everything I say is wrong.”
BYRNE: It’s also important to note that Linda’s going through a very rare situation as a parent. [Dealing with her daughter’s illness] is not typical for most parents, and I think that speaks to how universal any kind of trauma can feel. Linda’s looking for someone to listen to and validate her.
How does this film register in both your bodies of work?
BYRNE: For me, it boils down to the creative highlight of my career.
A$AP Rocky is in this film, and he’s phenomenal. Have either of you met Rihanna?
BYRNE: Not me, her.
BRONSTEIN: Rocky had a very long costume fitting, it went about 5 hours. I sat with him, and he FaceTimed Rihanna. All I could say was, “Oh my god.”
From Variety US