Movie Review

Rose Byrne plays one stressed-out mom in If I Had Legs I'd Kick You

Conan O'Brien and Rose Byrne in If I Had Legs I'd Kick You

Photo courtesy of A24

Movie history is littered with depictions of stressed-out mothers who have breakdowns due to the pressure put on them by their children, spouses, or society in general. Recent examples include Hereditary, Tully, and Nightbitch, with each of them finding different ways to depict their main character’s struggles. Yet another put-upon mother goes through the wringer in the oddly-named If I Had Legs I’d Kick You.

When we meet Linda (Rose Byrne), she’s already in the middle of a huge ball of stress. Her daughter (Delaney Quinn) suffers from an unnamed illness that requires around-the-clock care and frequent doctor visitors. Her husband, Charles (Christian Slater), is a boat captain whose job keeps him away from home for long periods of time. And her job as a therapist requires her to hear other people’s problems, necessitating her seeing a fellow therapist (Conan O’Brien) on a daily basis.

Nearly everyone else she encounters in the movie adds to her anxiety, including Caroline (Danielle Macdonald), a new mother who’s constantly worried about her baby; Dr. Spring (Mary Bronstein), who constantly harps on Linda to get her daughter to eat; an officious parking attendant at the hospital; and a sneering desk clerk at the motel she and her daughter are forced to stay at after a plumbing disaster at home. Consequently, she dismisses James (A$AP Rocky), another motel worker, the one person who treats her with a modicum of kindness.

Written and directed by Bronstein, the film is a harrowing experience that somehow also manages to be darkly funny at times. Linda is dealing with way too much for one person to adequately handle, something that is compounded by the fact that nobody really listens to her, not even the therapist she’s paying to do so. Scenes bounce back and forth between Linda demonstrating righteous anger at what the world is throwing at her and crushing guilt over supposedly not doing enough for her child.

Bronstein depicts Linda’s journey in a number of interesting ways, some straightforward and others not so much. Bronstein makes liberal use of close-ups on Linda’s face, heightening the feeling that the world is closing in on her. The plumbing problem at her home results in a huge hole in the ceiling, which becomes the source of some unexplained phenomena, a choice that might have been unnecessary.

What’s most striking about the film is how hardly anyone is on Linda’s side. Since the film joins the story as it’s already in progress, the audience is left to guess as to how Linda has behaved in the past to garner such negative interactions from people who should be helping her. While she’s not a perfect person, she also doesn’t appear to be such a jerk that she should be treated with disdain everywhere she goes.

Byrne, who’s gravitated toward lighter roles in recent years, is an absolute marvel in this part. The more stress Linda feels, the more she becomes disheveled, and Byrne makes you feel every ounce of the character’s pain. O’Brien, who’s rarely had to play anyone but “Conan O’Brien” before, is surprisingly good, tamping down his comic sensibility to complement Byrne well. A$AP Rocky also makes a nice impression, elevating a character that’s a little underwritten.

The role of a mom is never an easy one, and that’s in the best of circumstances. If I Had Legs I’d Kick You - a title that is never explained yet still somehow fits - earns its stripes by demonstrating how the often thankless job of motherhood can become even more distressing when the mom in question is given little to no support.

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If I Had Legs I'd Kick You is now playing in select theaters.

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Movie Review

Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma gives horror a surreal twist

Photo courtesy of MUBI

Hannah Einbinder and Gillian Anderson in Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma.

The horror genre really ramped up in the 1970s and ‘80s, bringing with it a new subgenre - the slasher - that gave audiences new visuals of gore, but also a reliance on sexism and homophobia that would come to define the era. The new film Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma wrestles with that legacy in ways that are funny, thought-provoking, and downright strange.

Kris (Hannah Einbinder) is a queer filmmaker who has been hired to reboot the moldy IP that is the Camp Miasma franchise, one that was fresh in the 1970s but which numerous shlocky sequels have rendered irrelevant. In an attempt to get to know the property better, Kris has scored a meeting with the reclusive Billy (Gillian Anderson), the star of the original film who has shunned the public eye for decades.

Turns out that Billy lives deep in the woods at Camp Rivoli, which served as the location for the first film. As Kris tries to get to know Billy and convince her to be a part of the new film, she starts to fall under Billy’s spell and the lore of the franchise as a whole. That includes believing that the movie’s villain, Little Death - a transgender person who has an air conditioning vent as a head/mask - may not just be a character created for the movies.

Written and directed by Jane Schoenbrun (I Saw the TV Glow), the film at first feels like it’s going to go the straight-up comedy route, with comic explosions of blood, a strange fascination with candy brands, and a production design that does nothing to hide that the two main actors are on a movie set with painted backdrops. This is backed up by Kris’ phone conversations with her girlfriend, Mari (Jasmine Savoy Brown) and her agent (Sarah Sherman), as well as numerous other details.

But the film starts to go down the surreal route the longer Kris stays at the camp with Billy, especially when they sit down to watch the original Camp Miasma. An extended sequence shows a good amount of that film-within-the-film, demonstrating why Kris and Billy have a love/hate relationship with the property. For Kris, though, the lines between the film and the real world start to blur, and Schoenbrun uses a variety of out-there elements to drive the point home.

The final act of the film can barely be described as Kris goes deeper down the rabbit hole, with Schoenbrun using her film to comment on the horror genre as a whole, its treatment of women and LGBT people, the movie industry, and more. All the while the “camp” of Camp Miasma maintains a presence, with candy wrappers showing up everywhere and the tongue-in-cheek references to Little Death (the French term La petite mort, which means “the little death,” is a euphemism for orgasm).

Einbinder, an Emmy winner for Hacks, is the perfect person to inhabit her role. Her established real-life and fictional personas color everything she does in the film, with her enthusiasm and curiosity shining through. Anderson leans heavily into another reference - Norma Desmond from Sunset Boulevard - to create a character that is as mysterious as she is alluring. Supporting actors like Brown, Sherman, Patrick Fischler, Dylan Baker, and Eva Victor keep the movie at the right pitch all the way through.

While other films have made fun of horror movie tropes before, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma finds a wholly unique way of doing so. It’s a funny and daring trip into the psyches of two women who may be victims of their own obsessions, and of the movies that made them that way.

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Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma is now playing in select theaters

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