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Rose Byrne is in every frame of If I Had Legs I\u2019d Kick You, the remarkable, funny, and slightly scandalous movie that opens the Melbourne International Film Festival tonight.<\/p>\n
The camera sits tight \u2013 really tight \u2013 on her flawless face, tracking every twitch, grimace, scowl and frown as Linda, a therapist and the mother of a very sick child, descends into a psychological hell from which she can see no escape.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s called motherhood.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat I wanted to do was something I have never seen before,\u201d says the movie\u2019s American writer-director, Mary Bronstein, who is in Australia as a guest of the festival. \u201cI wanted to make an expressive piece of work about what it\u2019s like to be a caretaker in a very serious, high-stakes situation, where you feel like the entire universe is against you.\u201d<\/p>\n
For most of the film, Linda\u2019s husband is nothing more than an angry voice (Christian Slater\u2019s, to be precise) on the other end of the phone, offering unwanted advice about how to fix things. The child \u2013 heard but not seen \u2013 won\u2019t or can\u2019t eat, and demands almost constant care.<\/p>\n
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Writer-director Mary Bronstein, pictured at Wax Music Lounge in Melbourne, drew from her own life experiences for the film.Credit: Joe Armao<\/p>\n
Their home has become unlivable because a leak in the apartment above has caused the ceiling to collapse, so mother and child have moved into a motel room, whose tiny space is filled with the beeps and flashing lights of the machine that pumps life-sustaining nutrients into the child. Linda seeks relief in alcohol, drugs, and sly escapes from the nightmarish claustrophobia of her situation.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s nothing heroic or stoic about this long-suffering woman \u2013 whose tribulations may be real or may be at least partly manufactured in her mind \u2013 but she\u2019s absolutely anchored in truth.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe tiny seed that started the entire movie is a real situation I lived through with my daughter \u2013 she\u2019s 15 now \u2013 when she was seven,\u201d says Bronstein. \u201cShe was very seriously ill.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bronstein and her husband live in New York City, and the treatment their daughter needed was in San Diego, on the other side of the country. \u201cSo my daughter and I lived together as sort of demented roommates in a small motel room for eight months, and I had a full existential crisis. I was so focused on the situation at hand, which was everything to do with her, that I felt like I was disappearing, literally.\u201d<\/p>\n
The things that happen in the film, she adds, aren\u2019t all drawn from her actual experience, and she isn\u2019t interested in detailing what\u2019s factual and what\u2019s not. \u201cWhat is important to me to get across is that it\u2019s all emotionally true.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Rose Byrne won the Silver Bear for best lead performance at the Berlin International Film Festival in February for her performance.Credit: Getty Images<\/p>\n
Bronstein, who started as an actor before making her directing debut 17 years ago with Yeast (in which she co-starred alongside Barbie writer-director Greta Gerwig), has a small role in this movie, as the doctor in charge of the sick child\u2019s care. And her view of Linda is not a particularly kind one.<\/p>\n
Doctor Spring represents, Bronstein concedes, the \u201cself-hatred\u201d she felt at the time. \u201cBut in a more general sense, it is a judgement of mothers who are not being perfect all the time, who are having their problems, who are struggling, who maybe are faced with something they can\u2019t handle and need help [with]. You know, there\u2019s a lot of helpers in the film, and there\u2019s a lot of listeners, or potential listeners, but Linda feels as if she\u2019s screaming into the wind and the void and nobody is hearing or helping.\u201d<\/p>\n
There is a lot of very dark humour in the film, alongside a deep sense of frustration and confusion. Above all, it\u2019s about a side of motherhood that rarely gets addressed in cinema.<\/p>\n
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\u201cI want it to spark a conversation about female rage, and why that makes people so uncomfortable,\u201d Bronstein says. \u201cIt makes women uncomfortable too, not just men. It makes everybody uncomfortable, the idea of female rage, because it feels bottomless.\u201d<\/p>\n
The love for If I Had Legs I\u2019d Kick You has been almost bottomless too. Since its debut at Sundance in January, it has garnered rave reviews, and earned Rose Byrne the best actress prize at Berlin the following month. But there\u2019s a special burden that comes with being the opening-night film at MIFF, one of the biggest film festivals on the planet \u2013 namely, that it should spark chatter at the after-party without killing the vibe.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s every chance it will succeed on both scores. But exactly what sort of chatter are you hoping for, Mary Bronstein?<\/p>\n
\u201cI hope electric, that\u2019s the word I\u2019m going to use,\u201d she says. \u201cCurious, with people excited at seeing something they haven\u2019t seen before.\u201d<\/p>\n
And, she adds, she hopes for \u201ca lot of car conversations on the way home. That\u2019s my goal.\u201d<\/p>\n
Almost certainly kicked.<\/p>\n
If I Had Legs I\u2019d Kick You screens at the Melbourne International Film Festival on August 7 (opening night) and August 9. Details: miff.com.au<\/a>
The Age is a festival media partner. <\/p>\n