Rose Byrne is terrifying in ‘If I Had Legs I might Kick You’ at Sundance

PARK CITY, Utah — What’s going to absolutely go down as one probably the most worrying motion pictures of the yr is “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You,” which premiered Friday on the Sundance Movie Pageant.

Author-director Mary Bronstein’s absorbing psychological drama a few mom at her breaking level is 2 hours of mounting nervousness and nervousness. 

For Rose Byrne’s falling-apart Linda, and for us.

I’m sweating simply serious about it.

Bronstein takes in any other case unremarkable home moments — driving with a pet hamster within the backseat, arguing with a parking attendant, dropping a pizza field — and depicts them by way of the eyes of a mother struggling to manage. Mainly, a horror movie. 

Each step and breath, informal or frantic, is laced with dread. 

Normally you defend your eyes when the serial killer’s damaged into the home. Right here, I used to be terrified when Linda took a stroll across the block. 

Byrne, who audiences are likely to affiliate with comedies similar to “Bridesmaids” and “Neighbors,” offers a career-best efficiency as Linda, the fraying guardian of a younger daughter who eats by way of feeding tube due to a dysfunction. 

Because the pressures pile on, the actress is so unrelentingly intense you’ll be able to virtually really feel her molecules vibrate.  

Including to the grind, Linda’s impatient husband is away on enterprise, and she or he has to work at her remedy apply throughout the day and maintain her little one at night time. 

When she’s not guzzling entire bottles of wine at 4 a.m. 

The little woman’s meal routine is a demanding train that wakes Linda up in the midst of the night time to refill a pouch. Her daughter must weigh a minimum of 50 kilos within per week or else, a medical skilled threateningly tells her, “we’ll need to reassess care.”

Then, amid her household woes, the ceiling of her bed room collapses, leaving a cavernous gap, and Linda and the child are compelled to remain at a dingy motel down the street. 

Bronstein’s movie, darkly however colorfully lit, verges on the supernatural at occasions. That gorge above Linda’s head takes on a spooky magical-realism high quality. Spaceship mild emanates from it, in addition to firefly-like beings. With out ever changing into pretentious, we get the sense that the void can be Linda’s personal.

“If I Had Legs” shouldn’t be “Spy,” however the actress doesn’t completely toss apart her comedic chops both. As Linda’s thrown warning to the wind, her reactions might be hilarious. These few laughs are huge as a result of they’re a short reprieve from the near-constant nervousness we’re feeling.

Somebody who wanted to rein within the humorous is Conan O’Brien, who makes his characteristic performing debut within the movie taking part in Linda’s colleague and therapist she’s infatuated with. This yr’s Oscars host is sort of good as a chilly, distant, un-empathizing jerk.

However don’t go telling him that. Onstage after the premiere, O’Brien reviewed himself.

“I feel like a complete fraud,” he stated.

And A$AP Rocky performs her motel neighbor, who’s each supportive and an enabler. 

Most haunting is Danielle Macdonald (“Dumplin’”) as Caroline, Linda’s paranoid affected person and, maybe, a imaginative and prescient of what Linda may herself grow to be in she doesn’t sort things.

Bronstein’s movie is a troublesome watch. There’s archival footage of Andrea Yates, the girl who drowned her 5 youngsters in a bath, and Yoselyn Ortega, the nanny who stabbed two New York children. 

And there are some grotesque moments involving the human physique and animals. 

When you can abdomen that, the jitters, elevated coronary heart and outright terror are price it for Byrne. She’s unforgettable.