‘If I Had Legs I’d Kick You’ Review — Rose Byrne has a slow-rolling anxiety attack in closeup

One of my best friends just had a baby in August. When I left Mary Bronstein’s new film If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, I texted this friend immediately, because I wanted to make sure she had no plans to watch this film any time soon. It was almost too much for me to handle — and I mean that as the highest compliment — so I can only imagine how it would play to someone experiencing motherhood for the first time. God bless y’all. Whew.

Rose Byrne plays Linda, a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown… or maybe she’s been having a nervous breakdown for a very, very long time. Her daughter (Delaney Quinn) has been sick for quite a while; she doesn’t like to eat, and instead she’s kept alive through bags of goop that drip through a port that’s been installed in her stomach. Their lives revolve around her tube, including her days spent at the rehab center where she receives treatment — and where doctors are worried that she’s not gaining weight fast enough, and where they say she might be dropped from the program if she doesn’t meet her goals soon.

Then the ceiling in Linda’s apartment collapses into her bedroom, and with her husband endlessly…