“If I Had Legs I’d Kick You”, interview with director Mary Bronstein and actress Rose Byrne

During the 20th edition of the Rome Film Fest we spoke with Mary Bronstein and Rose Byrne, director and main actress of  the film “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You”. This compelling film masterfully blends dark humor with raw emotional depth, capturing life’s contradictions, the challenges of motherhood and the layered and complex human experiences.

The film indeed reflects life’s unpredictable nature, using humor as a survival mechanism amid stress and adversity, preventing the story from becoming overwhelming and cleverly employing also visual and behavioral humor in order to find comedy in absurdity and tensions.

The interview

Main actress Rose Byrne talked about her intense performance, highlighting the cinematic choice of close-up shots that keep the camera almost inches from her face. This intimacy emphasizes vulnerability, yet moments of breathing space provide needed relief. Byrne reveals that balancing absurdity and realism required exploring the limits of performance, making humor feel authentic even in tense moments.

The director Mary Bronstein highlighted how the film’s setting mirrors the protagonist’s mental landscape — a turbulent world where the environment seems to follow and destabilize her. The director describes this as a visual metaphor for modern parenthood and societal pressures, emphasizing how contrasting childhood freedoms of the past with today’s overprotection highlight the challenges that nowadays parents face, from digital supervision to societal judgment.

She also explained more about the choice of this particular title “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You“, that is a wordplay on the and American expression and symbolizes the feelings of the protagonist’s will and also a desire for empowerment .

“If I Had Legs I’d Kick You” is a provocative exploration of resilience, humor, and the chaos of contemporary life, resonating across diverse audiences.

Plot