Subversive FF: If I had legs, I'd kick you

If I had Legs, I'd kick you

dir. Mary Bronstein; USA; 2025; 113 min

A surreal black-comic chronicle of motherhood on the brink of psychological collapse, featuring a career-defining performance by Rose Byrne, If I Had Legs, I’d Kick You is packed with absurd situations, frenetic camerawork, a hallucinatory rhythm, and an atmosphere of mounting anxiety that exposes thrnee cracks between the banality of everyday neurosis and the paranoid abyss of madness. The film follows Linda, an overworked New York therapist and exhausted mother struggling to stay afloat. When the ceiling of her apartment literally collapses on her head one day, she is forced to confront yet another crisis and move into a budget motel with her young daughter, all while navigating negotiations with inept contractors, her child’s mysterious illness, an absent husband, a missing patient, and a procession of people either unable or unwilling to help.

Byrne’s tour-de-force performance earned her the Silver Bear, a Golden Globe, and an Academy Award nomination. She is joined by television host Conan O’Brien as a dismissive and disinterested psychotherapist, Harlem rapper A$AP Rocky as a charming yet shady motel manager, and director Mary Bronstein herself as the irritating and patronising Dr. Spring. Described by critics as “a feature-length panic attack,” the film is presented in collaboration with the Subversive Film Festival.

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