‘If I Had Legs I’d Kick You’ explores a mother’s existential crisis

Sometimes the best films are the ones that are most difficult to describe, the ones that can’t be boiled down to a pithy tagline or plot summary.

This is almost certainly the case with “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You,” one of most audacious films of the year, in which Rose Byrne plays a mother on the edge. There's an unseen kid with a mysterious illness. There's the constant humming of medical equipment. There's a hole in a ceiling that may be coming to life. There's A$AP Rocky as a motel employee. There's a phone husband and Conan O'Brien's uninterested therapist. And there is the feeling of exhaustion so deep, so endless it manifests not in rest but in mania.

For writer-director Mary Bronstein, her film is an experience that she likens to likens to being on a roller coaster.

“Everything i