From the moment it begins, Mary Bronstein's "If I Had Legs I'd Kick You" aims to put you inside the head of a mother in crisis, and for the next couple of hours it does so in such an exhausting, claustrophobic, anxiety-inducing manner that, as you take a journey on this cinematic endurance test, you feel many things: grudging admiration, abject terror and, finally, sweet relief when the closing credits roll.

Can a film succeed too wildly in accomplishing what it sets out to do? By the movie's midway point, when a sinister hamster shows up to add another layer of torment to the life of Linda (Rose Byrne), you might think yes. And guess what? At that point, there's still another hour to go of extreme close-ups, oppressive sound design and surreal images that would keep David Lynch awake at night. If you're a woman and you're on the fence about becoming a mother, you might never have sex again.

The magic trick of "If I Had Legs I'd Kick You" is that you find yourself caring deeply for Linda, thanks to Byrne's vivid, impassioned performance. You can't shake her. Happy as I was to be free from a movie that at times felt tedious and suffocating, I thought a lot about Linda for a good week after seeing it. Byrne's work as a struggling woman worn down and on the verge of being erased by the pressures engulfing her is that magnificent.

"If I Had Legs I'd Kick You" invites comparisons to another pressure-cooker picture, the Safdie brothers' 2019 adrenaline ride "Uncut Gems." For starters, it's produced by Josh Safdie and Bronstein's husband, Ronald (himself a longtime Safdies collaborator), and shot by cinematographer Christopher Messina, the DP on the Safdies' "Good Time." It's a team that has no qualms about aggressively pushing the limits of its story as well as the patience of its audience. It is purposefully unpleasant. For Mary Bronstein, who wrote and directed the movie, there's no other way to make Linda's annihilation feel real.

Reality, though, is subjective here. The movie opens with a conversation between Linda and her unnamed daughter (Delaney Quinn), a young girl whose face we never see, but whose anxious, insistent voice we hear constantly. "Mommy is stretchable," the girl observes. Linda objects. She is very much not stretchable, she argues. Also, she contends, she doesn't get sad. Bronstein undercuts this assertion with a tight close-up on Byrne that reveals the depths of her misery — also her pores.

The daughter suffers from a mysterious illness that requires a feeding tube and the kind of hands-on care that understandably overwhelms Linda. She has little support from her AWOL husband, who calls in periodically, primarily to criticize, while away on a work trip. Then the ceiling collapses — literally, producing a torrent of water crashing into their apartment, a cascade possessing (roughly) the volume and roar of Niagara Falls.

All of these horrible things — the water, the damage, the gaping hole in the ceiling that feels like a portal into oblivion, the daughter's neediness — would appear to be heightened manifestations of Linda's fragile mental state. Who knows, maybe the daughter is a figment of her imagination too, though I don't think the movie supports such a reading. For one thing, her girl's request to get a hamster and Linda's weary appeasement just rings all too true.

Bronstein populates the movie with an offbeat set of supporting characters and her casting elevates every one of them. When Linda and her daughter are forced to relocate to a motel, she's befriended by a neighbor (rapper ASAP Rocky) willing to help Linda on an escapist quest to become more than a wine mom. Conan O'Brien plays Linda's exasperated therapist, never once going for a laugh, which in itself is part of the film's sharp-edged humor. And there's Danielle Macdonald playing a mother even more troubled, who is in fact one of Linda's patients because, yes, Linda is a therapist too and, from all evidence, a pretty good one.

Linda makes dozens of bad decisions in "If I Had Legs I'd Kick You," many of them seemingly indefensible until you realize that just how utterly isolated she feels. Abandonment runs rampant in this movie. Linda just wants someone to tell her what to do or, at the very least, offer some help. She finds only cold indifference, which, again, could be more a product of her own sense of alienation and desperation. I just know that Bronstein demands you pay attention to her, and with Byrne diving headfirst into the character's harrowing panic, you will find you have no other choice.

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'IF I HAD LEGS I'D KICK YOU'

MPA rating: R (for language, some drug use and bloody images)

Running time: 1:53

How to watch: In theaters Oct. 10

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