NEED TO KNOW
- A24’s If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, in theaters Oct. 10, has released its trailer
- The psychological drama from writer-director Mary Bronstein stars Rose Byrne as a wife and mother unraveling
- It costars Conan O’Brien, Danielle Macdonald, Ivy Wolk, A$AP Rocky, Christian Slater and Delaney Quinn
Rose Byrne is a woman in over her head in If I Had Legs I’d Kick You.
The nerve-rattling new A24 drama from writer-director Mary Bronstein, in theaters Oct. 10, stars Byrne, 46, as Linda — a therapist with mental health struggles, a wife to an absent husband and mother to their sick daughter.
A new trailer offers glimpses of poor Linda’s “life crashing down around her,” as an official synopsis declares. The overwhelmed woman “attempts to navigate her child’s mysterious illness, her absent husband, a missing person, and an increasingly hostile relationship with her therapist.”
The latter character is played by Conan O’Brien in a rare feature film role. In the trailer he can be heard inquiring of Byrne, “What is it you think it’s your job to fix?”
“I’m asking you what I’m supposed to do. Can you hear me?” she screams in response.
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Danielle Macdonald, Ivy Wolk and A$AP Rocky costar in If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, which had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in January. At the Berlin International Film Festival in February, it earned a Silver Berlin Bear award for Byrne’s lead performance and a nomination for best film.
Bronstein also cast Christian Slater as the voice of Linda’s husband, only appearing via phone calls, and Delaney Quinn as her mysteriously ill daughter, who can be heard but never seen onscreen.
The movie’s trailer ends with Byrne as Linda intoning, “Everything is under control” — while it certainly appears otherwise.
As Bronstein told The Hollywood Reporter in February, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You was inspired by “a very low place”: a personal experience caring for her sick child in a hospital-subsidized hotel room for eight months.
“I was displaced and under so much stress, and I just started unraveling. I kept treating it like it was temporary, even though it kept going on and on,” the filmmaker revealed. “At some point, I decided to sort of take control — even though I didn’t know at the time that this was what I was doing — by turning this experience into a piece of writing. When we make art, we do have a form of control.”
If I Had Legs I’d Kick You is in theaters Oct. 10.
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