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I, TONYA | FILM REVIEW
****
Dir: Craig Gillespie (15, 120 mins)
Starring: Margot Robbie, Sebastian Stan, Allison Janney,
(15, 2hrs)
A superbly visual, funny, moving and thrilling retelling of champion ice skater Tonya Harding’s life, told by three very unreliable narrators, I Tonya, does a cinematic triple-axel.
Margot Robbie stars as Tonya Harding, a ‘white trash ‘ ice skater pushed by a ruthless mother from hell, an Oscar-worthy Alison Janney, towards Olympic glory. Since her youth Tonya had been pushed to succeed, perhaps as a way of escaping her roots or perhaps as an act of long-term sadism by her mother. Harding may not be the cookie cutter American Homecoming Queen but she’s talented. Disliked by the other WASP-like ice skating proteges, she is a square peg in a round hole. Her difference is only exacerbated when she marries Jeff, a never-better Sebastian Stan, who soon turns out to be as equally abusive as her mother, beating his wife and trying to control every aspect of her life.
Harding bites back, but is trapped within this abusive triangle. She tries to free herself from his clutches but ultimately he will play a part in her downfall. Harding allegedly had someone kneecap her arch rival Nancy Kerrigan, something which she has always denied. The events here are murkily motivated, with Jeff and his dopey sidekick Shawn (played with slob-like relish by Paul Walter Hauser) unwittingly setting in motion a blackly-comic chain of thuggish incompetence with some local idiots.
Robbie successfully creates a very human Harding: she may not be what the Olympic committee wanted to represent the USA but she had plenty of talent and grit. The film holds up a mirror to snobbery, class and the ‘acceptable’ lifestyle of a winner with aplomb. Harding’s ‘American Dream’ ends up being toxic.
Director Gillespie propels the film at a breakneck pace, mixing direct-to-camera interviews from the main participants, flitting back and forth in time with ease and kinetically whirling around the ice skating routines. The three narrators, Harding, her ex-husband Jeff and her mother are all unreliable in their own ways, giving warped perspectives on their motivations, directly addressing the camera as the tale unfolds. The central trio are fantastic, offering nuanced turns in a film that manages to achieve a tonal balancing act from high comedy to moving drama and a biting satire about America itself. It’s bravura film-making, worthy of Olympic gold.
words KEIRON SELF
Out now in cinemas