Watch this film in cinemas and be smarter than the man sat by me

If I Had Legs I’d Kick You offers one of the most unflinching and visceral on-screen portrayals of motherhood I’ve ever seen, crowned by Rose Byrne’s superbly feverish lead performance.

Step aside Timothée Chalamet in Marty Supreme, for this takes it up a notch as a feat of energy and endurance. She has rightfully earned her first best actress Oscar nomination with this tour de force turn after previously mostly flexing her comedy chops in the likes of Bridesmaids and Bad Neighbours.

But as the man sitting next to me in my screening proved, it’s also possible for some to spectacularly miss the entire point of this film when he leaned over to his friend and said: ‘Well that’s the best advert I’ve seen for contraception in a while.’

For what If I Had Legs I’d Kick You isn’t afraid to do is break taboos around parenting, voicing concerns and regrets, which makes for a powerful – if at times uncomfortable – movie, whether you’re a parent or not.

I was actually left slack-jawed that making a weak quip was my fellow audience member’s immediate reaction after this film had spilled its guts out to us in such an intimate and uncompromising way.

It’s also brutally funny, sugarcoating nothing and making a bid for one of the most horrifyingly memorable scenes in cinema to feature a pet hamster.

Inspired by writer-director Mary Bronstein’s real-life experience, Byrne plays therapist Linda, a woman on the edge as she juggles clients in crisis, her unnamed daughter’s feeding disorder which requires an internal tube and pump, and her absent and rather unsupportive husband Charles (Christian Slater).

To top it all off, a leak in her apartment building destroys her bedroom ceiling, creating a giant hole that she becomes oddly fixated by – as well as it forcing her and her little girl to move out to a nearby low-rent motel while it’s fixed.

Here Linda meets charismatic and bored superintendent Jamie (A$AP Rocky), forging an unexpected bond via the comfort of booze and drugs.

The rapper continues the acting strand of his career here after making a splash opposite Denzel Washington in Spike Lee’s Highest 2 Lowest in 2025, putting in a quieter but solidly compelling performance.

Bronstein frames everything to be from Linda’s point of view, with consistent close-up shots of Byrne’s face throughout helping to add to the film’s intensity and feeling of claustrophobia, as well as feeding Linda’s rising panic.

We never see her daughter’s (Delaney Quinn) face either, but If I Had Legs I’d Kick You is soundtracked throughout by the beeps of her machinery and her tired whines as she acts out towards her mother while they try to tackle her treatment. It’s relentless, which is very much the point as Linda struggles to cope.

Sometimes it’s also funny – such as her screaming her frustrations into a pillow before calmly inviting her next client in for their session – and sometimes it’s devastating.

Not helping that is her own therapist, played with a satisfying lack of sympathy by US late-night host Conan O’Brien.

Bronstein has managed to create an impressively complex character study and scenario that both entertains and exhausts, all the while keeping the audience on edge whenever it comes back to the ominous hole in the ceiling.

It’s a fixation for Linda that’s subconsciously linked with the opening in her daughter’s abdomen, leading to a couple of flirtations with body horror as well by Bronstein.

There’s a powerful rawness and lack of judgement in this film that distinguishes it so much from others and the artifice they often hide behind.

It’s not a feelgood movie that will necessarily inspire a flurry of rewatching, but it does feel like something you need to watch lest you miss out on what cinema is still capable of doing – and making you feel – amid the noise of franchises, sequels and mega-budget blockbusters.

If I Had Legs I’d Kick You is out in UK cinemas on Friday.

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