Rose Byrne on playing a mother cracking up in taboo-busting film

If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, for which Rose Byrne just won a Golden Globe and is Oscar-nominated for best actress, is unmistakably a horror film. Yet it centres on a mother, Linda, whose very sick child is never seen and whose condition is implied only by anxious medics and a feeding tube.

The film is claustrophobic and vertiginous, at times like an anxiety dream and at others so real you can barely look at it; Bronstein says she was very influenced by Eraserhead. Mary Bronstein frames the story as a parental anxiety only a woman can have: in her view, Linda cannot leave.

The film puts you inside Linda’s experience and asks uncomfortable questions — "Can you love something so much that you smother it?" — while insisting that anger, frustration or despair do not equal lack of love. Bronstein draws on her own life: her daughter had a period of grave illness and, now 15, has recovered.

rose byrne, mary bronstein, golden globe, oscar, horror film, feeding tube, eraserhead, parental anxiety, motherhood, linda