If I Had Legs I’d Kick You

“If I Had Legs I’d Kick You” is a terrifying movie about a woman who is overwhelmed by the needs of her sick daughter and the demands of her caregivers, her disintegrating apartment ceiling, and the patients in her practice as a therapist. Writer/director Mary Bronstein was inspired by her own experiences as the mother of a sick child and the movie is not so much heightened as subjective. We are not just watching this mother; we begin to feel the pressure she is under.

Rose Byrne gives one of the best performances of the year as Linda, whose husband (Christian Slater) is a cruise boat captain, away from home for months at a time. Their daughter (played by Delaney Quinn), whose face is not seen until the very end of the film, has some kind of eating disorder and gets much of her nutrition from a feeding tube connected to a finiky, beeping machine that Linda must supply and maintain. She is in a full-time non-residential treatment facility with a tyrannical parking lot attendant and a condescending presiding doctor (played by Bronstein) who reassures parents that their children’s problems are not their fault but always has judgey concerns about the “quality of care.”

And then the roof falls in. Literally. The ceiling of Linda’s apartment suddenly has a huge hole. She and her daughter (just named “Child” in the credits and never given a name in the film) have had to move into a seedy motel. Her husband keeps nagging her to get it repaired but the contractor says he has to go to his father’s funeral and she has too much to do to stay on top of it.

Linda is a therapist. Byrne’s performance is the heart of the film and she is especially good at shifting seamlessly from real life to “therapist face,” smoothing out her anxiety to show a calm, concerned but professional, appearance. She has one patient who is a new mother (the always outstanding Danielle Macdonald), so panicked about doing something wrong that she cannot be apart from the baby, even bringing him to her therapy sessions. Linda herself is in therapy (Conan O’Brien, yes, that Conan O’Brien) is excellent as her psychiatrist.

It has elements of a horror movie, especially when Linda goes back to her apartment and is either stoned or hallucinating at what she sees there, and as one person after another seems completely incapable of showing her any genuine sympathy or providing any support. ASAP Rocky, so good earlier this year in “Highest 2 Lowest,” gives a very different but equally strong performance as Linda’s neighbor in the motel who tries to befriend her.

It may be unfair to say that a movie about someone’s life getting to be too much itself gets to be too much. But Linda is so unsympathetic, most of those around her so superficially drawn, the narrative so subjective, that it becomes less effective, more therapeutic for the filmmakers than the audience.

Parents should know that this is a disturbing movie with a main character unraveling under intense pressure and making some bad choices. Characters drink, get drunk, and discuss and use drugs and there are brief graphic medical images. A pet is run over and we see the bloody remains.

Family discussion: What was the greatest source of pressure on Linda? Where should she have gone for support? Why is it hard for her to accept help? How much of what we see is in her head?

If you like this, try: “Tully” with Charlize Theron