{"id":287120,"date":"2025-11-15T23:31:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-15T23:31:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/287120\/"},"modified":"2025-11-15T23:31:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-15T23:31:09","slug":"rose-byrne-plays-a-mother-on-the-edge-in-mary-bronsteins-if-i-had-legs-id-kick-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/287120\/","title":{"rendered":"Rose Byrne plays a mother on the edge in Mary Bronstein’s If I Had Legs I’d Kick You"},"content":{"rendered":"

I hadn’t planned on posing my curliest question to Sydney-born, New York-based star Rose Byrne straight off the bat. In fact, my notes clearly say: “Don’t ask this first.”<\/p>\n

What: Motherhood as panic-attack inducing thriller that will also make you snort laugh<\/p>\n

Directed by: Mary Bronstein<\/p>\n

Starring: Rose Byrne, Danielle Macdonald, Delaney Quinn, A$AP Rocky, Christian Slater, Conan O’Brien, Ivy Wolk<\/p>\n

When: In cinemas November 13<\/p>\n

Likely to make you feel: Like screaming into the void<\/p>\n

But a bit like the absolute mayhem that follows a ceiling collapsing in a biblical flood, leaving a void in Linda’s apartment \u2014 Linda being the harried mother Byrne plays in Mary Bronstein’s second feature, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You \u2013 it just happened.<\/p>\n

“What does the void mean to you, Rose?”<\/p>\n

I’ve jumped ahead because a bright and breezy Byrne, white T-shirt glowing in New York’s afternoon sun, is perched below an intricately painted floral ceiling. Like her spectacular lead performance, it simply cannot be ignored.<\/p>\n

“Let’s start with the easy ones,” she says with a hearty guffaw, her Australian accent only occasionally twanging with adopted American intonations.<\/p>\n

“The ceiling is the show-stopper. It’s so funny, because someone said to me that it’s like an existential birth canal.”<\/p>\n

Funnily enough, in one trippy sequence, Linda stares up into the chasm and sees strange swirling lights that may or may not be there, spookily responding: “Mum?”<\/p>\n

Byrne expands: “It’s not not an existential birth canal, that’s for sure. I live for the weirder aspects of filmmaking and the grey areas \u2014 the parts of being a person that are unexplainable.”<\/p>\n

“Mary definitely pushes the limits of that with this movie, which is very Lynchian,” she says, referencing the late American filmmaker<\/a> who created the weird and wonderful Twin Peaks.<\/p>\n

Too many voices<\/p>\n

Lynchian is a great way to sum up If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, which brilliantly functions on more than one level.<\/p>\n

Sure, there are surreal moments, but on the surface, it’s just a very bad day in the life of Linda.<\/p>\n

Loading Instagram content<\/p>\n

An exasperated therapist with enough of her own stuff going on at home, Linda can be brusque towards her clients. They include fellow US-based Australian actor Danielle Macdonald’s clearly drowning new mum, Caroline.<\/p>\n

“Danielle’s is such a fantastic performance, embodying a woman in a deep, postpartum psychosis<\/a>,” Byrne says.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“It’s heartbreaking, and Linda isn’t helping.”<\/p>\n

That’s partly because no-one is helping Linda.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Her husband (Christian Slater<\/a>) is a captain away at sea, full of not-so-supportive\u00a0suggestions on the phone while she struggles to single-handedly manage the health care of their persistently heard but almost-never-seen daughter (Delaney Quinn).<\/p>\n

Linda is harangued by the beep of her daughter’s feeding tube, connected to a mysterious ailment that’s never named. She also has to battle with a snooty social worker (played by Bronstein) who constantly questions her medical choices.<\/p>\n

At work, her colleague, who is also her therapist, is equally dismissive. Chat show host Conan O’Brien plays him in a chameleonic turn.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Talk-show royalty Conan O’Brien plays Linda’s contemptuous therapist. (Supplied: A24)<\/p>\n

“It’s such a wink, because Conan’s spent 20 years having someone in that chair, listening to, laughing at and indulging them,” Byrne says.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Then, in this, he actively has contempt for his patient, which is so funny, and Conan’s razor-sharp wit shines through.”<\/p>\n

When the sky falls in, Linda’s spiralling panic attack sees her and her daughter cooped up in a seedy motel.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In desperate need of peace, Linda’s further frustrated by the pedant working at the front desk (Ivy Wolk), who refuses to sell her wine because ringing it up will creep past the licence.\u00a0<\/p>\n

So, Linda turns to rapper A$AP Rocky’s motel manager for help with securing other means to dull her pain.<\/p>\n

“Rocky fills the screen with charm, with that quality that you can’t direct,” Byrne says.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“You just have it, or you don’t, and that brings relief to the audience. Suddenly, you can breathe.”<\/p>\n

And breathe<\/p>\n

Breathing easy won’t last in a film that’s way more into hyperventilating.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Rose Byrne plays a mother on the edge in If I Had Legs I’d Kick You. (Supplied: Logan White \/ Courtesy of A24)<\/p>\n

“The day-to-day minutia can tip you into the darkest part of your soul,” Byrne, a mother of two, says.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“That’s what makes the film so extraordinary and darkly funny \u2014 that tightrope comedy between the hugest questions and the tiniest little grievances.”<\/p>\n

Everything from a screaming abandoned babe to a feral hamster on the loose to that gunk-raining chasm in her roof pushes Linda to her limits.<\/p>\n

“Mary’s vision was to ramp up this fever-pitch tension that adds up to a car crash, but you can’t look away,” Byrne says.<\/p>\n

Bronstein told Byrne that no matter how wild Linda’s responses to these rolling catastrophes get, we had to stay on her side.<\/p>\n

“We might hate or be disgusted by her actions, but I said to Rose, ‘The number one thing is, we love Linda’,” Bronstein says.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“It doesn’t work if there’s no empathy.”<\/p>\n

Bronstein had complete trust in her star.<\/p>\n

“When Rose came on, it became a movie,” Bronstein says.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Mary Bronstein says Rose Byrne brings a certain depth to the role that couldn’t have come from anyone else. (Supplied: A24)<\/p>\n

“She’s a true creative partner. She’s a serious theatre actor who’s played Medea, and she’s a gifted comedian as well.<\/p>\n

“I was given a gift to have her talent.”<\/p>\n

A career with legs<\/p>\n

Byrne grew up in Balmain and cut her teeth in the movie Dallas Doll alongside Sandra Bernhard and Two Hands with the late Heath Ledger.<\/a><\/p>\n

“We were just kids starting out, and it’s beyond my wildest dreams I’m still doing it,” Byrne says.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“More and more, it feels like a miracle, what with AI, and I have so many friends who are out-of-work crew members.”<\/p>\n

As Bridesmaids star Byrne sees it, comedy kicked her career into high gear.<\/p>\n

“It was a huge creative turning point,” Byrne says.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“It felt freeing, and also more challenging. Something I can really sink my teeth into.”<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Rose Byrne and Heath Ledger take a break from celebrating Two Hands at the Sundance Film Festival in 1999. (Lindsay Brice \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n

For every excruciating moment in If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, there\u2019s a laugh-out-loud chaser.<\/p>\n

Debuting at Sundance in January, it went on to the Berlin International Film Festival, where Byrne was awarded the Silver Bear for Best Leading Performance. There’s already Oscars buzz.<\/p>\n

“It’s very surreal, because I’ve never been in this conversation,” Byrne says.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Of course it’s flattering, and I’m as vulnerable as the next person in this business. But I’ve also realised it’s out of my hands. I’m just honoured to be part of the conversation.”<\/p>\n

Laughing at herself as much as anyone else allows me to end on a slightly cheekier note. Is Bobby Cannavale \u2014 who also starred in Medea \u2014 a more supportive husband than the frankly useless one played by Slater?<\/p>\n

“That’s not cheeky at all,” Byrne says, with a hearty chuckle. “Bobby’s hyper-present, completely engaged.”<\/p>\n

If I Had Legs I’d Kick You is in cinemas now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I hadn’t planned on posing my curliest question to Sydney-born, New York-based star Rose Byrne straight off the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":287121,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[64,63,134,41028,165633,165634,165635,165636,41029,165637,165639,165638,165632],"class_list":["post-287120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-entertainment","tag-if-i-had-legs-id-kick-you","tag-if-i-had-legs-id-kick-you-movie","tag-if-i-had-legs-id-kick-you-plot","tag-if-i-had-legs-id-kick-you-release-date","tag-if-i-had-legs-id-kick-you-review","tag-rose-byrne","tag-rose-byrne-movie","tag-rose-byrne-movies-and-tv-shows","tag-rose-byrne-new-movie","tag-where-to-watch-if-i-had-legs-id-kick-you"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287120","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=287120"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287120\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/287121"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=287120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=287120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=287120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}