(Margot
Robbie plays Tonya Harding)
This is an uneven, luridly entertaining
film about the life and career of a notorious ice-skater. (Review by Patrick
Compton - 8/10)
Some pretty bad things happen in I, Tonya, Craig Gillespie’s revisionary
film about the disgraced American ice-skater, Tonya Harding, but there are
plenty of laughs as well which sometimes makes for an awkward mix.
The basic story, which climaxes in 1994, is
well enough known. Harding, a hugely talented ice-skater, was found to be mixed
up in a plot in which her great rival, Nancy Kerrigan, was deliberately
“knee-capped” by an assailant shortly before the American championships and the
Olympic Winter Games.
Scripted by Steven Rogers, director
Gillespie has delivered a wild, knowing black comedy in which we are encouraged
to laugh at the goings-on involving people who resemble nothing so much as the
inmates of a Jerry Springer Show.
At the time, Harding (superbly played by
Margot Robbie) was largely reviled as an example of American trash on ice who
rarely received fair marks from judges who felt that she didn’t conform to the
kind of Apple Pie middle-class girl that they felt best represented their
country. While Kerrigan danced to Mozart and wore beautifully tailored
costumes, Harding jived to ZZ Top and wore her mother’s cheap, glitzy outfits.
Harding, it was generally considered, clearly came from the wrong side of the
tracks and was always battling the odds.
Gillespie has decided to level the cultural
and emotional playing fields by portraying Harding’s life from her own
perspective. What emerges is that she was abused as a child and a teenager by
her monstrous mother, LaVona Golden, played by Allison Janney, who is favoured
to pick up an Oscar as best supporting actress for her brilliant performance.
LaVona passes on the baton of domestic
abuse to Harding’s husband, Jeff Gillooly (Sebastian Stan), who continues to
beat his wife up unmercifully. Harding, it has to be said, is no natural
victim, responding in kind whenever she can. How she managed to practice and
climb the ice-skating ladder while all this was going on is a mystery that the
movie doesn’t try to unlock.
The structure of the film is unusual. The director
uses mockumentary interviews with some of the characters (conducted after the
event) to punctuate the action, while also employing some direct-to-camera
commentary on the action (breaking the “fourth wall”) from Harding at various
key moments.
The movie has caused plenty of controversy
in the United States, with some claiming that Harding was less innocent about
the attack on Kerrigan than she claimed, while some of Kerrigan’s supporters
say that she was almost completely ignored in the drama, a claim that is
largely true.
For most audiences, however, the truth of
the affair will be of less interest than its entertainment value, and here the
movie certainly delivers. Janney is magnificent as the mother from hell (watch
her mockumentary scenes with the parrot on her head) while Robbie is stunning
as the hard-boiled Harding who manages, at times, to engage our sympathy. There
are also some sub-Fargo scenes to savour, particularly involving the idiot
friend of Harding’s husband, played to memorably awful effect by Paul Walter
Hauser.
I,
Tonya is playing at Gateway Mall. – Patrick Compton
Posts
