The scariest movie of the year won’t be Weapons or whatever the hell is going on in Black Phone 2, but Mary Bronstein’s sophomore feature, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You. Rose Byrne stars as Linda, a therapist who is grappling with her daughter’s mysterious illness that prevents her from eating normally while her husband is out of town on business and their apartment teeters on the edge of literal collapse. Also: Conan O’Brien plays her therapist, and if you think that guy is gonna be helpful about all her problems, you’ve got another thing coming. Pushed to the brink of sanity, Linda unravels over the course of several tense, painful episodes that are also — thanks to Bronstein’s sharp script — very, very funny.
Bronstein’s last feature was her 2008 mumblecore, bad-friend comedy Yeast, starring Bronstein herself alongside a little-known ingénue named Greta Gerwig. (The film also features appearances from the Safdie brothers and Sean Price Williams.) That movie was an acerbic portrait of a friendship gone sour, laced with barbed insults. There’s a tenderness in If I Had Legs I’d Kick You that lends the film a more rounded portrait of things going very wrong. Byrne won the Silver Bear for Best Leading Performance at the Berlin Film Festival earlier this year, and an October release suggests there might be a serious awards-campaign push for her in the film. Best known to moviegoers for her comedic turns in Paul Feig’s films — her work in Bridesmaids is the stuff of legends — Byrne’s turn in Legs (as the cast and crew referred to the film at Sundance) is harrowing and raw. A lot of this movie is just a close-up on her face avoiding — and occasionally giving into — panic. Byrne has never been better, sharper, or more intimidating as a screen presence, carrying the movie with squints and frowns. If ever there was a time to give a performer of this caliber her due, Legs is it.
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