With her life crashing down around her, Linda (Rose Byrne) attempts to navigate her child’s mysterious illness, her absent husband, a missing person, and an increasingly hostile relationship with her therapist (Conan O’Brien).
A visceral and relentless portrayal of motherhood, womanhood and all the struggles that come with the curveballs life throws at you, writer/director Mary Bronstein has crafted a truly unique cinematic that is equally as uncomfortable as it is riveting. As If I Had Legs I’d Kick You prepares to release in Australian cinemas on November 13 following an acclaimed festival run, Nick L’Barrow spoke with the filmmaker about creating the immersive atmosphere, and how this specific story could resonate with a universal audience.
Nick: Mary! It’s such a pleasure to meet you! How are you?
Mary Bronstein: I’m doing very well. Thank you for having me!
Nick: I’m so thankful I got to see this movie in a cinema, because there is such a cinematic quality to the way you tell this story. There is the invasive cinematography that feels so intrusive on Rose Byrne’s face, and the sound design is incredibly immersive. I’m curious to know what that invasiveness and impressiveness looked like in the script, and how did that evolve into what we see on screen?
Mary Bronstein: Yeah, that’s a great question. And, by the way, I love that they showed this to you in a movie theatre! As you said, it’s a very visceral, experiential type of film that you could see on a screener or on your television, but it would just be such a different experience.
At a script level, I had a lot of those big creative concepts. I knew that I wanted sound to be a big element of the film, and as a sort of expressive element as a way to further the oppression of the character, and close in tighter and tighter and tighter. The idea that this woman cannot find a place that’s quiet, that’s silent. It doesn’t exist.
And the closeness of the camera comes from the idea that I really, really wanted this movie to have a singular viewpoint. It’s this subjective experience that this woman is having, but that the viewer is also having it with her. We’re never not in a room that she’s not in. We never see anything that she doesn’t see. We don’t hear anything that she doesn’t hear. We’re with her mentally.
There comes a point as the viewer where you need to decide are these things happening? Are they perceptions? Is it a combination of the two? There’s no wrong answer. There’s no right answer. And I wanted to create something where I would be able to do that. It’s a tall order, by the way! But it was all definitely there at a script level.
We shot this on 35 millimetre cameras with no zoom lenses, because you lose the quality and the sharpness. So at times, the camera is literally in front of her face. And there were even times where I had to tell Rose, “Okay, this is on your eyeballs. This one is just your whole face”. But that woman is so talented she can act with her eyeballs!
The sound design was super fun because there’s no score in the movie, it’s all sound design. That is what functioned as the score. And some of that sound are things that are happening in the literal space, such as the medical machine that’s beeping in the hotel room, or the sound of the baby monitor. Some of the sounds are only things we as the audience can hear. There’s a soundscape in the dialogue that works with her emotional state. It was some of the most fun work of making that movie because there was just no rules. There’s no rules when you’re making a movie that’s dealing with expressive language. And it’s gets more and more intense as the movie goes on. Like, the baby monitor just sounds more and more awful.
Nick: The gradually screeching as the movie went on was so unsettling!
Mary Bronstein: Right! And the beeping gets louder, and the clock in her office gets louder. And there are all these things that even if you’re not noticing them consciously, it’s affecting you as you’re watching the film. It piles up and piles up to the point where it has to burst.
I was so lucky to have so many amazing department heads that were willing to have fun and help the evolution and the process of making this feel like an experience. It was such “art school vibes”. Limitations were the mother of invention. We had resources. Like, I had A24 backing me, but we didn’t have money to bring in a giant crane or rig. So, it was like, how are we going to pull this off? And that’s where I want to live as a filmmaker. If you have a blank check, that’s kind of like being in jail.
Nick: It’s like you can pay your way out of creativity, right?
Mary Bronstein: If you can do anything, you might as well do nothing. It’s the same reason I chose to do practical effects instead of computer effects. With VFX, anything is possible. But, I want to figure it out. I have this idea, this picture, in my head and I need to figure out how we’re going to do this. Most people agree the greatest movies were made before computers were invented. And I’m not against computers! There’s VFX in this movie for things like clean up, but there was no scene that was created with VFX.
Nick: It is a visceral experience that I truly didn’t feel like I could escape from. And I’m not a woman, I’m not a mother, but I felt like I was inside of this character’s mind and on her journey, and I resonated with some of the things she was feeling. How important is it to you as a story teller to create something that is uniquely specific, but also universally resonates?
Mary Bronstein: Absolutely, that is my philosophy. I truly believe that in film, and not just film, but any art, the more specific you’re willing to get, the more you’re letting people in to relate to it. If something is for everyone, and Hollywood try and try and try and try to do it, but those are just not good movies, because they end up being for nobody.
Like, a movie like I, Tonya, my daughter and I love. It’s incredible. But, it’s about something really specific. It’s about a person that exists in a different world. It’s about something very specific, and a real story that happened in figure skating. I’m not an Olympian figure skater. I was never as poor as Tonya Harding was, but that’s not a movie about figure skating and the Olympics. It’s about someone chasing their dream, and how some people have to scratch and claw their way into that dream, and then they still get screwed by it. Who can’t relate to that?
Nick: What’s the point in living through someone else’s story or experience if you can’t relate to it on the most basic of human levels, right?
Mary Bronstein: Right! But, there is also the other part of it where it tests our compassion and empathy. It’s through being open to experiencing other people’s points of views. And that can make people very, very uncomfortable. That can’t be the problem of the artist. You have to come to these stories with a sense of curiosity or understanding about something you don’t know.
Thank you so much to Mary for her time, and to NixCo PR and VVS Films for organising the interview. If I Had Legs I’d Kick You is in Australian cinemas November 13.
