If I Had Legs I'd Kick You: a woman coming apart brilliantly

Rose Byrne gives the performance of her career as a mother unraveling in real time, and Mary Bronstein never lets us look away.

By MIGUEL MATEO | OCTOBER 29, 2025

Rose Byrne has long been one of cinema's most underutilized talents. She proved her comedic brilliance in Bridesmaids and the criminally underrated Spy, performances that should have earned her Supporting Actress nominations. Now she has finally been given a role worthy of her range as Linda in If I Had Legs I'd Kick You.

She is not on the verge of breaking down. She is already deep inside it. Byrne gives us a woman unraveling before our eyes, making one disastrous decision after another, yet we never stop understanding her. She makes us laugh and ache at once, delivering a messy, deeply human, career-best performance that deserves to be remembered when the Academy fills out its ballots this January.

Bronstein directs with a suffocating intimacy that mirrors Linda's spiraling headspace, tight and anxious framing that never lets us breathe easier than she does. The film understands that motherhood's quiet catastrophes rarely look like catastrophes from the outside, and it refuses to soften Linda into someone easier to root for. That refusal is the whole point. We are not asked to approve of her choices, only to sit inside the panic that produces them, and Byrne makes that panic legible without ever tipping into caricature.

The supporting cast, including Conan O'Brien in a surprisingly grounded turn as Linda's therapist, orbits her well without pulling focus. This is Byrne's film, scene for scene, and she carries it with a rawness that feels almost uncomfortable to watch, in the best way. There is a scene midway through, a single unbroken take of Linda trying to hold a phone call together while everything around her falls apart, that should be shown in acting classes for years to come.

If the film has a weakness, it is that its relentless intensity leaves little room to exhale. Some will find the experience exhausting rather than cathartic by the credits. But that is a feature of the design, not a flaw in execution. This is a film built to sit with you uncomfortably, and Byrne is the reason it works as well as it does.

Rating: ★★★1/2 out of ★★★★★