AroView: In an Oscar-nominated performance of controlled chaos, Australian actress Rose Byrne plays a therapist and mother on the brink of collapse trying to manage her daughter’s mysterious health condition, a character who is present but tellingly off-camera.

It’s mid-wived by those edgy executives at A24 and directed by Mary Bronstein, wife of the Safdie brothers’ co-conspirator Ron Bronstein, whose encouragement to ‘go for broke’ on the stress levels ramped up in films like Good Time and Marty Supreme is in evidence here. Recommended, then, with all due trigger warnings in place.

“An exercise in riveting restraint and painful poetry, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You is an emotional knockout.” ~Chase Hutchinson, TheWrap

“Bronstein has fashioned a cinematic anxiety-fueled experience whether you can relate to having children or not.” ~Gregory Ellwood, The Playlist

“Delivering a feverish, raw-nerve performance sure to go down as one of the year’s greats, Byrne has never had a role even remotely this intense to prepare us for the emotional acrobatics her writer-director has in store.” ~Peter Debruge, Variety