In Mary Bronstein’s new film “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You,” Linda, played by Rose Byrne, is exhausted, physically and mentally.
Her husband is away for work for an extended period, and her seriously ill child is rapidly approaching a new crisis point. To add further stress, her apartment ceiling has collapsed, so she’s staying at a crummy motel; her therapist is growing frustrated with her; and the parking lot attendant at the hospital seems to have it in for her. Even a hamster is giving her a hard time.
Through it all, Linda is replacing sleep with a steady diet of wine and weed, driving her toward a full-on crash.
Bronstein’s film, which opens in selected theaters on Oct. 10, is not for the faint of heart – it’s a full-tilt plunge into the world of a woman coming undone, dragging viewers along for Linda’s self-sabotaging ride.
Along with Byrne, the film features Conan O’Brien, Danielle Macdonald, and A$AP Rocky among its cast, but for those who think O’Brien is there for comic relief as the therapist, he’s not – he’s simmering with frustration at Linda’s constant deflections.
This is only the second feature for Bronstein, whose first film, “Yeast,” was shot on a camcorder in 2008. She spoke recently by video about the movie and how she relates to Linda. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Q. The camera is so close on Linda’s face so much of the time, while we never see the daughter’s face. Did you conceive both ideas early on as a contrast? What did you want it to convey?
They’re both in the first draft. This film uses cinematic language – I knew I wanted constant and extreme close-ups to convey a sense of claustrophobia.
If I could have put the camera behind her eyeballs, I would have because I was using the camera as a radical tool to make the audience feel, “We are in her.” Not only in her point of view, but inside her head.
Can we trust her reality, or is only she seeing that? Was that woman really talking to her that meanly, or is she hearing it that way? I’m not letting you have space to think about that.
People have different interpretations of her reality, but there’s no wrong interpretation.
As for the daughter, Linda, in this moment, cannot see her as a child, as a cute, innocent girl.
She can only see her as an obligation, something she has to contend with. She derives no joy from this child. So conceptually, the idea is that if she can’t see her figuratively, then we can’t see her literally.
Q. In the opening scene with the daughter’s doctor, Linda’s daughter calls her dad “hard” and Linda “stretchable,” which angers Linda who interrupts to dispute this. Are you stretchable?
Stretchable, in the way that the child says it, is negative: I asked you to do something, and you say no, but I can get you to say yes. But sometimes stretchable is not a negative – it can mean you are open and can change your mind and can stretch yourself into situations that you might be scared of, but will do.
And “hard” also can be negative. But Linda hears it as “Daddy’s word is gold, but mine is like putty.”
On a personal level, my daughter’s 15 and I’m stretchable, but her daddy is not. And she knows it.
Q. In that scene, Linda’s unwilling to listen to what the doctor is really saying.
Linda’s so focused on this physical aspect of the illness, on the feeding tube, but it’s not the issue. And she’s being told by the daughter’s doctor that it’s not her fault that the daughter has this issue, but that she is a very important part of fixing it. And we know from outside that both of those things can be true at the same time, but Linda can’t wrap her head around that.
Q. Is Linda falling apart because of watching her child suffer or because she feels ignored by her daughter’s doctor and abandoned by her husband … and the contractor … and her therapist? Or does it go back further?
These are parts of her personality from before the story starts. But her stress is compounded, which is a big theme in the film.
When she is yelling at people, “Help me, tell me what to do,” and having real moments of vulnerability that people are not listening to, it’s because of the compounded trauma. So she gets louder and louder and runs away from her problems faster and faster, even as she’s screaming in your face. I give you clues that she didn’t just start drinking when the daughter got ill – it got worse then.
Q. But the ceiling collapsing right while her daughter is approaching a deadline from the doctor about gaining weight seems to really cause her to spiral.
Sometimes you have a central stressor, but when other things start piling on top of that, you start to wonder, “Is the universe against me?”
Those stressors end up kind of feeling equal when they’re not – the issue Linda has with the parking lot attendant [a stickler for rules when Linda needs a break while dealing with her daughter] is not equal to the life and death situation with the child. But to Linda, it has gotten to that point. The straw that breaks the camel’s back can be something really dumb. That’s what my experience has been.
Instead of using therapy to deal with things, she has been avoiding and deflecting and creating an environment that’s not therapeutic. So when she has a moment that’s truly vulnerable and one of the most heartbreaking in the film, she’s rejected, because it’s seen as a manipulation – you can’t treat people like she has and then suddenly expect a different reaction.
Q. And she lashes out at her husband.
When she’s talking to her husband on the phone, you can tell these outbursts aren’t new to him; it’s just the level that’s new.
He’s away for work, but he should be allowed on his day off to go to a baseball game. To Linda, it’s offensive because she has no space for herself, and she has no time off – she’s trapped in a hell, so she wants him to wrap himself in barbed wire and also be in a hell. But she does take space, she just takes it at night in an inappropriate and haphazard and not safe way.
She’s so ready for him to accuse her of being a bad mom, but he says nothing really wrong. It’s just a complicated dynamic.
I went through something like this with my husband in a similar situation. So I understand that dynamic intimately. And I will say, and you can print it, I wrote this movie, and I’m not an easy spouse to live with.
Q. Even though Linda tries to get her clients to see reality more truthfully, she can’t face her own problems honestly.
She’s running away from herself for the whole movie, sometimes literally, sometimes by drinking, sometimes by drugs, sometimes by eating, sometimes by having tantrums.
My whole idea is that you can’t really run – if you have trauma, it’s going to get you. Wherever you go, there you are. And that, to me, is an existential terror, which is a cornerstone of the film.