Danielle MacDonald

If I Had Legs I’d Kick You

02/03/26

The Cameo, Edinburgh

Her child is sick and Linda (Rose Byrne) can’t cope. Caring for her daughter (Delaney Quinn) is a full-time job – and she has an actual full-time job as well. Throw in an absent husband (Christian Slater), a judgemental doctor (writer/director Mary Bronstein) and a gaping hole in her bedroom ceiling, and it’s no surprise that Linda is tired, snappy and a little too reliant on wine and weed.

The child has an unspecified eating disorder and has been fitted with a feeding tube. (In an audacious directorial decision we never get a proper look at the girl, but it really works – this isn’t her story.) Linda’s paediatrician insists that she should attend parents’ meetings, where a group of mothers (no fathers in sight) are exhorted not to blame themselves for their children’s conditions. With no sense of irony, Dr Spring follows the meeting by telling Linda that her child is “failing,” that Linda doesn’t have the right attitude and, essentially, it’ll be her fault if the treatment doesn’t work.

Meanwhile, Linda’s husband, Charles, can’t help because he’s working away, but that doesn’t stop him from phoning to hector her. She should make the most of staying in a hotel, he says, implying it’s a holiday, but why hasn’t she chased up the contractor who’s supposed to be fixing the apartment? Why isn’t the child gaining weight? Why has Linda left the child alone to go shopping? Why hasn’t Linda answered his texts? Why, Linda? Why?

Her therapist (Conan O’Brien) isn’t much use either. Linda’s a therapist too, with an office down the hall from his, and his impassive responses rile her. She knows the tricks of the trade and is frustrated that he won’t transgress, won’t relieve her of responsibility by simply telling her what to do. When one of Linda’s own patients, a young mother with post-partum depression (Danielle MacDonald), abandons her baby in Linda’s office, it’s the final straw. Linda has reached her limit.

Almost a companion piece to Lynne Ramsey’s Die My Love, Bronstein’s movie is a searing indictment of a system that sets mothers up to fail, that overloads them with responsibility but provides no safety nets. Byrne’s portrayal of Linda’s mental decline is devastating: she loses all confidence in every area of her life, no longer capable of functioning as mother, therapist, wife or friend. Even her putative relationship with her hotel neighbour, James (A$AP Rocky), proves shallow and unreliable, prompting her to turn even further in on herself. The world is hostile and everyone is an enemy. In the end, there’s only one way out…

Linda’s disintegration is magnified by cinematographer Christopher Messina’s use of light: the gold flashes that dance in her periphery; the dreamscapes that veer between illusion and reality. The hole in the ceiling looms ever larger over Linda’s head, a great big gaping metaphor for a woman on the edge.

Byrne’s towering, nuanced performance makes her a worthy Oscar contender (although I’m still backing Jessie Buckley for the win). Meanwhile, this intense, emotional movie certainly seals Bronstein’s reputation as one to watch.

4.4 stars

Susan Singfield

Dumplin’

10/01/18

Another day, another Netflix movie – and it would seem that the company that once boasted so many below-average releases has really found its feet and is regularly producing work that challenges the output of the more traditional film studios. Take Dumplin’ for instance. This low-budget charmer combines the American preoccupation with beauty pageants with the songs of Dolly Parton, and has plenty of opportunities to turn into a outright shmaltzfest. But it’s surefooted enough to waltz past the potential pitfalls, emerging on the far side as a genuinely heart-warming feelgood affair.

Willowdean (Danielle MacDonald) is a plump teenager living in a small town in Texas with her mother, Rosie (Jennifer Aniston). The plumpness, by the way, is an important plot point, not a judgemental description.

Back in her glory days, Rosie was crowned Miss Teen Bluebonnet at a local beauty pageant and has traded on the memory of it ever since, devoting all her spare time to organising similar events, making guest appearances and taking in sewing whenever she needs to make ends meet. For obvious reasons, Willowdean has not pursued a similar path through life and tolerates her Mother’s unthinking nickname for her – Dumplin’ – with as much good grace as she can muster. She works at a local diner, where she’s increasingly drawn to co-worker Bo (Luke Benward), but feels too self-conscious to take the situation further. She’s missing the companionship of her recently departed aunt Lucy, the woman who introduced young Willowdean to the music of Dolly Parton – and who did the lion’s share of babysitting while Rosie was on the road being a ‘beauty queen’.

When Willowdean discovers that Aunt Lucy once held an unfulfilled desire to enter the Miss Teen Bluebonnet pageant,  she decides that she will take part in it herself as a kind of protest against such an outmoded way of judging a woman’s worth. Naturally enough, this soon brings her into conflict with her mother – and with her best friend, Ellen (Odeya Rush). Can Willowdean work up the necessary confidence to see her unlikely mission through? And what exactly is she hoping to achieve?

This could so easily go horribly wrong, but screenwriter Kristin Hahn and director Anne Fletcher keep their eyes firmly fixed on the film’s central message – that our worth is about more than our looks – and let everything else fall into place. There’s an interesting detour where Willowdean and her friends get some tuition from a bunch of wonderfully nurturing drag artistes and, whenever proceedings threaten to lose impetus, there’s another Dolly Parton classic to power things briskly along. Whatever you think of beauty pageants – and I’ll happily admit they don’t figure highly on my list of favourite things – Dumplin’ is an enjoyable story that even the most pernickety will surely  enjoy.

Fans of Dolly Parton, by the way,  will have a field day.

4.2 stars

Philip Caveney