After a flattering journey started a year ago at Sundance, finally arrives at the cinema If only I could kick you of Mary Bronstein. The film produced by the A24 marks the return of the American director to the feature film after 17 years and will be in Italian cinemas from 5 March 2026 for I Wonder Pictures.
Se solo potessi ti prenderei a calci: la spirale discendente
We all have complicated lives, but some are more than others. Linda could probably win the prize for the most complex life in the world. Your daughter has a pathology that forces her to be fed via tube, and needs continuous medical attention that, with her distant husband, fall solely on her. All the rest of his time is taken by his career as a psychotherapist, in which he is competing with a number of problematic patients and resistant to any help. And when a mysterious whirlwind opens into the ceiling of the bedroom, flooding the apartment completely and forcing mother and daughter to temporarily move to a motel, the tide of responsibility that surrounds Linda is rising again, sending the woman into a descending spiral from which she risks being swallowed forever..
Nessuna tregua
If only I could kick you, it’s a very intense experience, from which you get frastorted. Linda finds herself in a state of free fall that bounces her from one crisis to another, with the only short moments of relief provided by her therapy sessions. Everything is asphyxiating and confused: the tight frames, the discontinuous assembly, the scenes cut from barrel as soon as the crisis starts to a resolution. It is a film that has only one obsession: to lock the viewer in Linda’s unsustainable psychological reality.
Le celate esitazioni di sé solo potessi ti prenderei a calci
The weakness of If I could only kick you off is not so much in its monodimensionality in itself, as in the fact that the film fails to fully trust its own leading idea, and finds itself bombing the viewer not only with one bad thing after the other, but with a series of formal concepts and choices that sometimes turn out a little free, just another stimulus to give us to prevent us from getting bored. It is a shame because Rose Byrne eats the screen (not by chance this interpretation has earned her a Silver Bear in Berlin), and probably with a little extra breath she would have managed to give us a performance not only intense and magnetic, but also cathartic and resolute.
Recommended for intrepids.
Il cast
Rose Byrne is Linda, a mother on the verge of nervous tracollo and absolute protagonist of the film. Conan O’Brien delights us with an unpublished dramatic role as Linda’s therapist, while Danielle Macdonald is Caroline, a patient also in deep crisis. They complete the ASAP Rocky cast as a motel employee and Christian Slater in those Charles, distant husband of Linda. She also appeared as director Mary Bronstein in the role of Dr. Spring, who oversees Linda’s daughter’s clinical situation.
L’articolo If only I could kick you: the risks of intensity — The review comes from Dituttounpop.it.
