'If I Had Legs I'd Kick You' review: Rose Byrne should be an Oscar front runner

WHAT IT'S ABOUT Rose Byrne has been Oscar-nominated for her performance as a therapist and mother undergoing a personal crisis in "If I Had Legs I'd Kick You," a Montauk-set comedy-drama now streaming on HBO Max.

The movie, also shot out east, finds Byrne's Linda overburdened by the demands placed on her at home, where she cares for her young daughter with pediatric feeding disorder while her absentee husband travels for work, and on the job, where, as a psychotherapist, she must put everything aside to live in her patients' worlds.

When their home gets flooded, with water gushing through the ceiling, Linda and her daughter relocate to a motel, and Linda's psychological state worsens.

The picture arrives courtesy of writer-director Mary Bronstein, with co-stars including Conan O'Brien (yes, that Conan, that's not a typo) as Linda's therapist and rap star A$AP Rocky as a manager at the motel.

MY SAY The movie unfolds in close-ups, in constricting shots that emphasize an enormous sense of unraveling. The camera remains trained on Byrne's face, watching as Linda struggles to persevere while besieged by demands.

This is Linda's world and her perspective. Her daughter is heard, but not seen or named. Her husband is but a hectoring presence on tense phone calls. Water gushes into their home and a tidal wave of panic and despair washes over the character.

Bronstein blends the painful reality with the sense of larger forces at play. The movie is at once specific and timeless. We all know what it means to go through a rut like this, for everything to seem to be going wrong at once. The movie captures that relentlessly, from its first shot to its last.

A few characters in Linda's orbit get a fuller treatment. O'Brien gives an astute dramatic performance as the therapist, also a colleague of Linda's. He conveys the obligatory empathy but colors it with barely disguised contempt. As the motel manager James, one of the few sympathetic characters in the movie, A$AP Rocky establishes himself as an actor to watch.

But the movie belongs to Byrne, a terrific actor for many years who seems to be finally and fully getting her due. This is a performance of ferocious intelligence and painstaking commitment. 

She captures the contradictions at the heart of the character, a devoted mother and caring person who can barely hold off the pressures. Linda's spiral happens in a series of small frustrations that combine into something greater. 

The star refuses to take the easy way out, to collapse into overwrought hysterics. She tells us who Linda is gradually, in close-up, and without compromise. In the real world, people don't have that one moment where it all spills out. But the collective sense of everything falling apart can be overwhelming. Byrne shows us what that feels like.

BOTTOM LINE Byrne should be an Oscar front-runner.