NEW YORK — Rose Byrne has scored with “Star Wars,” horror (“28 Weeks Later”) and raucous comedy (“Bridesmaids,” “Platonic”). Yet it’s her towering work as a super-stressed mother and therapist in the aptly named “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You” that’s put her in Best Actress Oscar contention.

Writer-director Mary Bronstein uses horror, Surrealism, even experimental filmmaking, “To tell this story,” she said at its New York Film Festival October premiere, “in an expressive way where you can only use cinema to get at the feeling of something.”

Byrne’s Linda cares for her daughter – whose face we never see – who lives via a feeding tube. Her husband (Christian Slater) is away. When the ceiling collapses in her Montauk apartment, she’s forced to move to a bleak low-rent motel.

Nearing a breakin

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