No Boots, No Straps: A Review of If I Had Legs I’d Kick You (TIFF 2025)
by Tessa Squissato
It takes a truly sick mind to schedule a screening of Mary Bronstein’s If I Had Legs I’d Kick You at 9AM on a Thursday— perhaps said individual could benefit from a therapy session with Conan O’Brien.
That first morn’ of TIFF, I wandered deliciously into the theatre excited to see my parasocial Uncle Conan on the big screen, blissfully unaware of the gut punch (or kick) that would soon follow. If I Had Legs I’d Kick You is what I’d refer to as a fight or flight film, a perpetual “oh dear god no” film, a feature-length panic attack, if you will. We’re emotionally handcuffed to Rose Byrne’s truly terrifically performed character Linda, as her life literally and metaphorically caves in on her. The way I see it, agency, or rather lack there of, is what engulfs this movie and its characters. In almost every way the film feels like a desperate and futile attempt to achieve the unattainable and avoid the inevitable.
Linda’s daughter suffers from an illness which controls her in such an insidious way as to disallow the young girl even an ounce of agency over her own mind and body. In childhood, powerlessness is expected and excused as a natural fact of life. Thus, the age and illness of Linda’s daughter affords her the grace and sympathy of those around her. On the other hand, Linda’s powerlessness in the face of life’s inevitable cruelties is met with judgement and blame. Bronstein’s film portrays true agency as a bright and shiny, but ultimately unattainable promise of adulthood.
We delude ourselves into believing that when we grow up we will obtain the control that we lacked in childhood. Of course this is true to an extent, however, when you’re continuously fucked over by extenuating circumstance after extenuating circumstance, it is nearly impossible to feel like you have any agency at all. Naturally, when we cannot achieve control, we feel shameful— shameful because we’ve been fed a pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps-otherwise-you’re-a-lazy-degenerate mentality all our lives. So of course I understood why if she had any power, any legs to stand on, Linda would figuratively (and maybe literally) kick the shit out of anyone who ever told her that self-discipline or sheer tenacity could stave off life’s horrors. Because neither fight nor flight is an option if you don’t have legs.
