Nothing's going right for Linda, the put-upon subject of the monumentally nerve-racking "If I Had Legs I'd Kick You."

Her daughter has a severe ailment and must be fed through a feeding tube; her condition is worsening, and doctors are starting to fear the worst. In addition, a leak has caused a massive hole in the ceiling of her apartment, and she's moved into a seedy motel while contractors work to repair it.

She's so stressed out that she can barely concentrate at her job, where she's a therapist to clients in need. Even parking at her daughter's school — where a merciless parking attendant is unwilling to give her a break — becomes an ordeal. And her husband is perpetually out of town, oblivious to it all, and is giving her grief about it to boot.

Writer-director Mary Bronstein stages all this as an unrelenting chaos show, all raw nerves and constantly spiking anxiety.

It's "Uncut Gems," but for motherhood.

Rose Byrne is marvelous as Linda, the center of this swirling hurricane, who's fraying at the edges and can't take one more indignity — until she does, because she has to, and she has no other choice. There's no relief, and she's never granted more than a few seconds of respite before someone else is yelling at her or something else is beeping in her ear. Even her daughter's pet hamster manages to scream at her.

Byrne's work is award-worthy, whether she's stuffing a whole slice of pizza in her mouth because she has no time to eat or whether she's pleading, "I just want someone to tell me what to do!" But she's not working alone, and "If I Had Legs" boasts several sterling supporting performances.

As Linda's therapist, Conan O'Brien — in the most substantial acting role of his career — is a tight counterbalance to her nervy tension, and A$AP Rocky works his natural charisma as her motel super, with whom she strikes up an oddball friendship of convenience. Danielle Macdonald is terrifyingly believable as one of Linda's patients, who is having her own struggles with motherhood. And as Linda's husband, Christian Slater is mostly an exasperated voice on the telephone.

Bronstein (2008's "Yeast") does a tremendous job of placing viewers inside Linda's head; you understand her mental state because the movie drops the audience inside her headspace without a net. By the end, viewers need a breather just as much as she does.

"If I Had Legs" has a robust sense of humor about itself and its protagonist, which begins to dissipate as it slowly turns into a horror film, and that hole in Linda's ceiling becomes a rotting abscess. The movie is at its best when depicting the strain of Linda's day-to-day struggles, and it starts to lose itself as it enters a kind of cosmic otherworldliness. But in a sense, the nightmare becomes a fantasy in and of itself, a relief from the unending burden of real life.

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'IF I HAD LEGS I'D KICK YOU'

Grade: B

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

Running time: 1:53

How to watch: Now in theaters

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