The Testaments of Ann Lee and If I Had Legs, I’d Kick You

We are all busy people. Thank you for finding the time in your lives to read my film reviews. I’ve seen two films this week and I’m reviewing them together, in part, to save myself some time. So, let me save you some of that precious resource too and say that they are both good films, with excellent central performances. The Testament of Ann Lee got more stars (4.5) than If I Had Legs, I’d Kick You (3.5) on the spreadsheet I’m keeping for this year’s viewing. This means I would recommend them both, but as time is short for all of us, if you only have time to see one, make it The Testament of Ann Lee. But, for those who want to know more, please read on and you might discover which film would suit you best.

Both films are about motherhood, the complex, real, thwarted and spiritual aspects of being a mother. However, I can’t write a simple compare and contrast review because they are the cinematic equivalent of chalk and cheese. An even better analogy might be that they are like fine porcelain and a jammy doughnut. They are beautifully realised, creative and vibrant worlds apart.

What I aim for in a film review is to give some emotional honesty to my viewing experience. I am middle-aged with a chronically ill, neuro-divergent daughter, living in a world that politicians and billionaires seem intent on destroying through war and climate obliteration. So, let’s say that when it comes to emotions and the way I am feeling, tired is always the baseline I’m working from.

Exhaustion is at the heart of the comedy-horror If I had legs, I’d kick you. It follows Linda (played by Rose Byrne). Her husband works away, leaving her to be sole carer for her chronically ill daughter who is being treated with a feeding tube that needs administering each night. Linda has a job where she is supposed to help others, but also needs therapy and is self-medicating with wine and weed. Then the roof in her apartment falls through, and she has to relocate to a cheap motel. A client of hers runs away. And she is constantly being faced with the double-speak of her daughter’s physician that tells her that blame is unhelpful, but on the other hand talks punitively and judgementally about the lack of commitment to her daughter’s treatment. Add to that an over-zealous parking attendant and the stakes for Linda rise and rise.

A first person, unreliable narrator is difficult to achieve in cinema. However, this is the closet a film can get, as we see the story from Linda’s perspective. It is shot mainly using looming closeups of Rose Byrne’s expressive face. We experience the film through her, with occasional breaks that show us the limits of her perspective.

If you liked the fast pace of Marty Supreme or Uncut Gems – this is a film for you. It provides an adrenalin fuelled ride through panic and miscommunication, sometimes being genuinely funny. However, there are also a couple of gruesome moments – it’s called a comedy-horror for a reason.

The Testament of Ann Lee is an historical musical drama. So, like If I had Legs, it combines genres, making it feel innovative and weird. And it is one of the weirdest films I have ever seen. Even amongst the strangeness of musicals, it holds a particular other-worldliness of its own. It uses real, contemporary testimony, but as it is a world that no longer exists, it feels as distant as some of the outer-galaxies of science-fiction.

The film stars Amanda Seyfried as Ann Lee, the founder of the Shaker Movement in 18th century New England. A movement better known for its beautiful rustic furniture than the remarkable woman who led a religious sect.

This is an epic telling that starts in childhood poverty in Manchester. Ann Lee works as a young girl in one of the cotton factories positioned next to the cathedral that still stands in the city centre. She is pious, anxious and caring. As she grows, she finds community in the house and services of Quakers, Jane and James Wardly, who preach that the second coming of Jesus will be a woman. Their services centre public confession and impromptu song and dance as worship. Ann marries fellow believer and blacksmith, Abraham, who is abusive and controlling. From within that marriage, she faces the deaths of four children either in childbirth or early infancy – her beautiful treasures.

Ann is imprisoned for disrupting a church service and while imprisoned, goes on hunger strike. In this weakened state she has a vision of herself levitating over Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. She interprets this as celibacy being the only true path to God. She becomes Mother Ann and travels with fellow believers to America to set up a religious community.

The narration is a voice over from Mary Partington (played by Thomasin McKenzie) taken from the few texts that have documented Ann Lee’s life. It often uses the words, “it is said…” but does so without interpretation or further commentary. If there is any cynicism or psychologising that takes places, it sits within the audience. It is a straight-forward telling of a complex life with the simple, but still controversial message that humans: men, women and children are equal. It is about a leader who places her trust in others and guides with care, compassion and an eye on nature.

The singing and dancing are both serious and joyful, with echoes of rapturous raves of the 1990s, and sometimes shot from above like a religious Busby Berkely routine.

I can’t draw parallels with other movies, but anyone who loves the weird, inventive and/or historical epic this could be the film for you. Rich with period detail, it builds a world that is harsh and difficult to exist within, but fascinating to watch. And Amanda Seyfried is truly amazing in the role.

And now for the tenuous link between the two films - Motherhood on film.

Depictions of motherhood are always saying something about their time, especially in relation to the role of women.

In this picture from King Vidor’s (1928) The Crowd, the father waits nervously for the birth of his child while the mother is excluded from the scene. The mirror image is of the doctor and nurse. Motherhood is too difficult to show. Under the Hayes code of the 1930s and 40s, the word “pregnant” was considered a problem. Hayes censorship meant that childbirth could not be depicted “in fact or silhouette”. Motherhood was a function of plot, but mothers were not characters. They were quiet, cyphers, not fully autonomous people with desires and ambitions of their own.

The Testaments of Ann Lee is particularly remarkable for its unflinching depiction of childbirth. Amanda Seyfried is generous, courageous, wholehearted and physically involved in the scenes of childbirth, but they are not what make her mother.

If I had Legs, is about the constant pull of motherhood that can unravel the identity of the woman. Motherhood is not some idealised state, but nor is it out and out negligent or abusive. Linda is just disappearing under the weight of it all, drowning not waving. Motherhood is literally being pulled around by a tube. It is inescapable, highly visible, not a background character.

Representations of motherhood are not just relevant to women with children. The images on our screens and our magazines of celebrity motherhood function to inform and regulate all women’s bodies and behaviours. These two films offer some resistance to the glamorising and primacy of motherhood. They open up different ways of discussing the nuances, the joys and the pains of women’s lives and perceived worth.

TL;DR – Motherhood is complex and messy on screen in 2026.

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