If I Had Legs I'd Kick You

Linda, Rose Byrne, is a dedicated therapist who is stretched to the limit as she cares for her daughter, who suffers from an eating disorder. Her child’s needs are constant and specific—the daughter must be fed through a PEG tube each night—creating a relentless cycle of obligation, fatigue, and anxious vigilance. The weight of responsibility is compounded by an largely absent husband, Charles, who is away on a two-month work trip and offers little more than critiques in the few conversations they manage to have.

When a catastrophic incident upends their life, a bedroom ceiling collapses in their Montauk apartment, flooding the space and forcing Linda and her daughter to relocate to a shabby motel. The sudden upheaval strips away the familiar safety of home and pushes Linda into a precarious new routine, where every day feels like a delicate balancing act between care, duty, and survival. The motel becomes a crucible where stress, fear, and a search for support collide, revealing the fragility of Linda’s carefully managed world.

Seeking help in a system that seems to stall under pressure, Linda reaches out to her colleague therapist, Conan O’Brien. But the professional door closes quickly as Linda’s behavior crosses lines, leaving the colleague exasperated and unable to accept her as a patient. The denial lands with a blunt honesty that underscores Linda’s isolation and the professional boundaries that she struggles to respect and redefine.

Inside the motel, Linda’s world expands in unexpected directions. She meets Diana, a snarky clerk played by Ivy Wolk, whose sharp wit and blunt candor cut through the day-to-day drudgery, and James, a motel superintendent played by A$AP Rocky, who becomes a source of both comfort and chaos. James offers practical help—he helps her score drugs online—and, in the face of her mounting stress, becomes a complicated emotional anchor for her daughter as well. Their relationship is charged, messy, and frequently unsettled, mirroring Linda’s unstable surroundings.

Caroline, a new mother who enters Linda’s orbit through sessions, embodies a troubling reckoning for Linda. Initially, Caroline—Danielle Macdonald—is described as someone who abandons her baby mid-session, placing Linda in an ethical and emotional bind. This fragile bond between therapist and patient evolves as Caroline later reappears at Linda’s home, but the encounter turns volatile when Caroline slaps Linda and runs away after her plea for help is refused.

Back in the tense rhythm of daily life, Linda confronts a dire medical milestone: her daughter cannot reach the weight necessary for the PEG tube to be removed. In a moment of desperation, Linda returns home and removes the feeding tube herself, a decision that triggers a cascade of surreal, hallucinatory imagery as she imagines the surgical hole closing. The scene underscored the depth of her deteriorating grip on reality and the costs of keeping everything together.

When Charles unexpectedly returns home and finds the aftermath, he repairs the ceiling hole, thrusting Linda into a spiral of fear about the truth resurfacing. Linda tries to shield her family from what happened, but the truth surfaces through James, who chooses to tell Charles the difficult facts rather than let the illusion continue. The revelation forces Linda to confront the consequences of her actions in a stark, unforgiving moment.

In a final, harrowing turn, Linda heads toward the ocean with the intention of drowning herself, a desperate act born of exhaustion and despair. She awakens beside her daughter, who expresses a quiet resolve to be better, a fragile thread of hope that threads through a story of struggle, error, and the stubborn possibility of change.

Last Updated: December 04, 2025 at 15:32