Linda is a psychotherapist caring for her clingy, anxious daughter, who has a pediatric feeding disorder that necessitates nightly use of a feeding tube. Linda also drives her daughter to and from a day hospital program daily. Linda's ship captain husband, Charles, is away from home for long periods.
The family's Montauk apartment is flooded after the ceiling collapses. Linda and her daughter move to a shabby motel run by an insolent clerk, Diana, and superintendent, Jamie. Linda struggles to sleep due to the noise from her daughter's feeding pump. She spends sleep-deprived nights outside the motel room, drinking wine, smoking cannabis, listening to music, and eating junk food. Repairs to the apartment have been left in limbo by the contractor's sudden departure.
Linda finds her clients demanding, including Caroline, a new mother suffering from paranoia and postpartum anxiety. Linda seeks therapy from a colleague, who is increasingly exasperated by her lack of professional boundaries. When Charles calls to check in on Linda, he is critical and unsupportive, saying he wishes he could "sit around all day" as a therapist. Her daughter's hospital program doctor reprimands Linda for frequently missing family therapy sessions and tells her her daughter must meet her weight goal or her level of care will be reassessed. Linda feels she's being set up to fail and that her daughter will not eat more as long as she is using the feeding tube.
Caroline abandons her son in Linda's office during a session, and when Caroline's husband refuses to pick up the child, she calls the police. Jamie offers to help Linda buy drugs on the dark web and offers her daughter emotional support. When he comes to the apartment to look at the collapsed ceiling he falls through the damaged floor and breaks his leg. Linda flees the scene after calling an ambulance.
Linda causes a scene at the hospital when she is told her daughter cannot reach the necessary weight for removing her feeding tube and feels the doctor blames her. She tells her therapist she aborted her first pregnancy years before having her daughter, and cries about her failings as a mother. He tells her he can no longer be her therapist. Caroline comes to the motel looking for Linda's help with a mental health crisis. When Linda suggests a hospital emergency room, Caroline slaps her and runs away.
Linda removes her daughter's feeding tube and has a hallucination of the surgical hole closing. Returning to her apartment, she discovers Charles has unexpectedly returned and had the hole in the ceiling repaired. They return to the motel room to find Jamie responded to the panicking daughter. Charles sees the missing feeding tube and Linda flees to the beach, running into the surf and repeatedly being thrown back ashore.
Linda wakes on the sand beside her daughter, the child's face visible for the first time in the film. She promises she will "be better" and her daughter smiles.
If I Had Legs I'd Kick You began filming in August and September 2023 in Montauk, New York, after SAG-AFTRA granted an interim agreement for the film during the actors' strike. The film was shot over 27 days, with Bronstein giving up her director's fee to obtain two additional shooting days. Due to the film's limited budget, Bronstein and the director of photography recorded its surrealist elements during post-production.
The film was Bronstein's first movie since her 2008 debut, Yeast.
Reception
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 92% of 225 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 7.7/10. The website's consensus reads: "Liable to leave audiences in a cold sweat, this fever dream immersion into parental stress connects with thunderous force thanks to Rose Byrne's gutsy star turn and director Mary Bronstein's uncompromising vision." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 78 out of 100, based on 40 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.
