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‘If I Had Legs I’d Kick You’ Review: Rose Byrne Is Brilliantly Unhinged in a Chaotic Maternal-Meltdown Drama

Director Mary Bronstein casts 'Damages' star Rose Byrne as a woman overwhelmed by life in an alternately exhilarating and maddening Safdie-like indie.

An A24 release forged in much the same mold as “Good Time” or “Uncut Gems” (which Bronstein’s partner Ronnie co-wrote), the Safdie-esque — but refreshingly female-centered — indie movie could be “Mommy No-Legs” to those guys’ crazy-making “Daddy Longlegs”: a virtuosic portrait of mental unraveling that uses every tool in the director’s arsenal to re-create an end-of-the-world feeling on the most intimate of scales. In theory, Linda should have all the skills one needs to deal with an unnamed, on-the-spectrum daughter, who is barely seen — but often heard, asking histrionic questions from the back seat or nearby room — until the very end, when cinematographer Christopher Messina (who worked as a camera operator on “Good Time”) finally reveals the kid’s face. Intensely subjective without ever pulling the literal first-person POV trick seen in last year’s “Nickel Boys,” “If I Had Legs” hews closer to “Beau Is Afraid” or “Punch-Drunk Love” in the way it uses an agonizing score, brusque cuts and claustrophobic cinematography to approximate the pressure its main character is under.

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