If I Had Legs I'd Kick You (2026) Dir. Mary Bronstein

It’s fascinating to explore the differences between high-stress cinema focused on men, and those focused on women. The Safdie Brothers’ Uncut Gems is a fitting comparison, focused on Adam Sandler’s pawnshop owner whose extra-marital affairs and spiralling debts put him in the crosshairs of some unsavoury people.

In Mary Bronstein’s second feature, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, and Lynne Ramsey’s Die My Love, which both came out in 2025, the stress comes from the undue responsibility placed on women irrespective of their own aims and ambitions.

Rose Byrne gives a powerhouse performance here as Linda, a psychotherapist whose husband works away for long stretches of time. She balances her career with the care of their daughter, who is struggling with an undisclosed feeding disorder. The daughter’s own anxiety is ramped up, leading her to be clingy and scared of being left alone, and her inability to manage solid foods means that Linda is constantly in the firing line from the doctors wanting to remove the feeding tube.

Piled onto this, while Linda’s husband is away, the roof of their apartment collapses, leaving her to manage the work, negotiate with the landlord, and move her daughter and her into a motel while work is completed.

Rather than a perpetually building tension made up of thugs with guns, or a series of bad decisions threatening to collapse around the protagonist, If I Had Legs… shows us the small ways in which women – in particular, mothers – are punished for exercising their own autonomy.

When Linda questions how the medical facility is measuring her daughter’s progress, she is punished with the threat that the ‘quality of care’ will have to be assessed. When the workers disappear from the crumbling apartment, with no indication of when they will finish, Linda is belittled by her husband over the phone. Not just in his questioning of her management of the situation, but with snide comments about ‘wishing he could sit on his ass all day’. Even her therapist minimises how she is feeling, and when she makes a major confession late in the film, he decides to stop their sessions.

Linda makes bad decisions in the film. She is not the idealised perfect mother, and her sympathy for her own patients erodes as her mental state becomes more fragile, yet she cares deeply and the films growing tension comes from the increasingly desperate decisions she finds herself making – both in a bid to retain a sense of herself, and to protect the ones she loves, even as she questions that love.

It’s a dense, beautifully realised film, that horrifies by only marginally heightening what women go through on a day-to-day basis. Decisions to hide the daughter from sight, show how lost Linda becomes due to the constant barrage of pressure.

Second Sight’s decision to release a special edition of this film, only a year after its release shows the impact that it had. It also makes it difficult to discuss things like picture quality or audio, often the hallmarks of a special edition UHD because the film already looked pristine.

What we do get is a collection of extras. They’re slight, primarily made up of interviews, but we do get a video essay from Amber T and a massive 120-booklet with new essays by Kat Hughes, Becca Johnson, Ariel Powers-Schaub, Rebecca Sayce, Jourdain Searles, and Heather Wixson. It’s a testament to the film that in such a short period, it has create this level of conversation.

★★★★½

4.5 / 5

Matthew Tilt

Instagram https://www.instagram.com/tiltmatthew90/

Second Sight presents If I Had Legs I'd Kick You Limited Edition 4K UHD & Blu-ray, available 7th December 2026

Special Features

• Dual format edition including both UHD and Blu-ray with main feature and bonus features on both disc
• UHD presented in HDR with Dolby Vision
• New audio commentary by Alexandra Heller-Nicholas
• Audio commentary with Director Mary Bronstein and Director of Photography Christopher Messina
• It's Okay to Feel Uncomfortable: a new interview with Mary Bronstein
• Leaning Into It: a new interview with Actor Rose Byrne
• Uncomfortable and Awkward: a new interview with Actor Christian Slater
• Into the Void: Amber T on If I Had Legs I'd Kick You
• Behind the Scenes
• Deleted Scenes

Limited Edition Contents

• Rigid slipcase with new artwork by The OC Agency 
• 120-page book with new essays by Kat Hughes, Becca Johnson, Ariel Powers-Schaub, Rebecca Sayce, Jourdain Searles, and Heather Wixson 
• 6 collectors' art cards