An exercise in riveting restraint and painful poetry, “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You” is an emotional knockout. The latest from writer/director Mary Bronstein, the film stars Rose Byrne as a troubled mother attempting to take care of her ailing daughter while her husband remains absent and her apartment is crumbling. But the plot matters less than the way this story is told.
This is a film that is as witheringly funny as it is disquieting, frequently teetering right on the edge of horror as we feel what seems like the very fabric of the world it creates coming completely apart before our eyes.