★★★ (3 out of 4)
Rose Byrne’s legs are working fine, thank you, in “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You,” now in theaters where the actress portrays a wife, mother and shrink whose anger is real but whose immobility is all in her head. That will happen when you think you’ve lost control of your life.
It’s certainly the case with Linda, the therapist Byrne plays like a gathering storm. She lives in a nothing-special Long Island apartment until the roof caves in, then she’s forced to try a tacky beachside motel. Her husband (Christian Slater) will be away for months. That leaves Linda in charge of their young daughter (Delaney Quinn), who won’t eat and must be fed through a tube. We never see the girl or even learn her name, though we do hear her nonstop prattling, like chalk on a blackboard. Does anyone still have a blackboard?
Hey, you’re probably thinking, that sounds like “Nightbitch” in which harried new mom Amy Adams turns into a feral dog. Nah. “Nightbitch” lost its nerve real quick. “Legs”—my shorthand for this mouthful of a title—keeps digging deeper into comic darkness until laughs disappear entirely and we’re left only with Byrne as a barely human version of soul-crushing angst.
Linda is a beast of a role and Rose Byrne plays her with everything’s she’s got and then some. No list of the year’s great performances would be complete without this tour de force.
It’s a hard to watch. But Byrne makes the experience memorably mesmerizing. In tandem with director Mary Bronstein who wrote the script, Byrne looks for help everywhere and gets it nowhere. And that includes Dr. Spring (Bronstein herself), her physician.
Not for Linda the dreams of an everyday housewife. “I work,” Linda shouts, burying her head in a towel to muffle her screams at the prospect of yet another patient. The excellent Danielle MacDonald pops in as the most demanding of the needy bunch.
In this modern era, which long ago junked the concept of “physician, heal thyself,” Linda seeks comfort from her own therapist, a cold fish played by a standout Conan O’Brien with just the right notes of impatience and indifference. Only a neighbor at the motel (A$AP Rocky, proving again what an acting find he is) offers anything resembling actual comfort.
And there’s Linda, a virtual Job of trapped motherhood, enduring each new circle of hell until even she longs for oblivion. The weed and the wine help, but the cycle of challenges quickly grows oppressive. The world Linda once knew is now crumbling around her. And Bronstein offers no relief.
Linda is a beast of a role and Byrne plays her with everything’s she’s got and then some. Though Byrne broke through on the TV legal drama “Damages,” holding her own with the great Glenn Close, the Aussie actress is best known for her comic roles in such hits as “Bridesmaids,” “Neighbors” and “Spy.”
There are flickers of her witty snap in “Legs,” but the role of Linda puts Byrne through an acting obstacle course that would test the mettle of a Meryl Streep. And she comes through with a tour de force that has already won her an acting prize at the Berlin Film Festival. That should be just the beginning. No list of the year’s great performances would be complete without this Byrne tour de force. So don’t screw up Oscar or we will kick you.