Barely five minutes into “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You,” the world — at least, the living-room ceiling — caves in on Linda (Rose Byrne), a stressed-out mother whose daughter is unsuccessfully battling a mysterious illness. Under normal circumstances, the shock would be upsetting; yet this emotionally devastating movie already has us so tightly wound that the rupture arrives with the force of an explosion.
Like that ceiling, Linda is breaking down. Caring for a child who refuses to eat and is sustained by a feeding tube is made even more onerous by the cheap motel where they have relocated until the hole is repaired. Almost equally taxing is her job as a therapist, especially the demands of one patient whose delusions about her new baby are particularly concerning. Wherever Linda looks, someone is angry with her and no one seems able to help: not her husband, Charles, a cruise captain on a monthslong trip (Christian Slater, appearing mainly as an exasperated voice on the phone); not her daughter’s vaguely threatening doctor (played by the film’s writer-director, Mary Bronstein), who berates Linda for missing family therapy sessions and questions her competence; and certainly not Linda’s own therapist (a wickedly hostile Conan O’Brien), who does everything but openly roll his eyes at Linda’s distress.
“Why don’t you like me?” Linda blurts during a session, and it’s a testament to Byrne’s remarkable performance that the question lands not as a whine, but as a bracing gust of honesty. And as one setback follows another, and Linda’s choices grow increasingly terrible and irresponsible, Byrne — under near-constant scrutiny from Christopher Messina’s assaultive camera — turns her face into an emotional battleground. By the time we see her screaming into a pillow, we’re right there with her.
Wrenching and at times suffocating, “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You” is a howl of maternal desperation spiked with jagged humor. A scene in a car with a vicious hamster is a pressure-relieving treat — even tiny animals don’t like Linda — as is Linda’s eventual appearance at group therapy, an unkempt specter at a feast of perfectly groomed and accessorized fellow sufferers.
Even so, some viewers could find the movie’s relentlessness exhausting, while others might feel it’s too relatable for comfort. Bronstein (who explains in the press notes that she wrote the script as a result of her own maternal difficulties) has waited 17 years to follow up on her hugely enjoyable first feature, “Yeast,” and she makes some smart choices, easing the strain on Byrne with supporting performers who cool the film’s feverish momentum. The wonderful Danielle Macdonald, playing a young mother who fervently believes she’s going to harm her newborn, is heartbreakingly believable. But it’s Linda’s barbed interactions with James (ASAP Rocky), the motel’s super, that add texture and shading to Linda’s barely suppressed fury. A gentle, easygoing soul, James is intrigued by this rude woman who repeatedly rebuffs his offers of assistance. Their connection — neither romantic nor entirely friendly — is as random as the mating of mayflies, but James’s low-key overtures (and Rocky’s nuanced acting style) allow us to see the damage inflicted by Linda’s self-involvement.
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