I, Tonya

There was a time, as strange at it might seem today, when gure skat­ing was a sport that Amer­i­ca took very seri­ous­ly. Through­out the ​’80s and ​’90s, the likes of Bri­an Boi­tano, Kristi Yam­aguchi and Michelle Kwan were house­hold names – but no skater ever achieved infamy like Tonya Hard­ing. Fol­low­ing an assault on her Olympic rival Nan­cy Ker­ri­g­an, alleged­ly planned and car­ried out at the behest of Harding’s bum­bling ex-hus­band Jeff Gillooly, she was banned from pro­fes­sion­al skat­ing for life. After fas­ci­nat­ing the pub­lic for years and spawn­ing doc­u­men­taries, books and Simp­sons par­o­dies, Harding’s sto­ry has found its way to the big screen thanks to direc­tor Craig Gille­spie and star/​exec­u­tive pro­duc­er Mar­got Robbie.

Based on con­flict­ing inter­views, con­tem­po­rary video footage, and a healthy dose of con­jec­ture, I, Tonya is a biopic inter­laced with present day mock-inter­views which leans heav­i­ly on the idea of an unre­li­able nar­ra­tor. Tak­ing overt styl­is­tic cues from pre­vi­ous Rob­bie projects The Big Short and The Wolf of Wall Street, there’s a brash dynamism to the film, which exam­ines Tonya’s tur­bu­lent upbring­ing and per­son­al life, ​‘The Inci­dent’ which end­ed her career, and the last­ing impact for almost all par­ties involved.

Con­spic­u­ous­ly absent from the sto­ry is Tonya’s alleged vic­tim Nan­cy Ker­ri­g­an, which doesn’t come as a sur­prise con­sid­er­ing the title of the film and the unapolo­get­i­cal­ly self­ish nature of its sub­ject, but it seem strange to silence such a key voice, and the trend with­in cin­e­ma to focus more on the per­pe­tra­tor of a crime than the ram­i­fi­ca­tions for the vic­tim is problematic.

Even so, Rob­bie does a sol­id job of cap­tur­ing the com­plex char­ac­ter of Hard­ing, pirou­et­ting from vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty to volatil­i­ty on a dime. Yet she is trumped by Alli­son Janney’s mar­vel­lous turn as the machi­avel­lian matri­arch LaVona Gold­en. Her per­for­mance as Tonya’s chain smok­ing, neg­li­gent moth­er – who is utter­ly devoid of warmth even in a film where the ice is a cen­tral char­ac­ter – might be car­toon­ish, but it’s com­pelling in its unpleasantness.

Rob­bie and Jan­ney are joined by play­ing-against-type Sebas­t­ian Stan as Tonya’s use­less hus­band Gillooly, and Paul Wal­ter Hauser as Jeff’s even more inept best friend Shawn Eck­hardt, as well as a per­ma-tanned Bob­by Can­navale who pops up as a reporter to pro­vide con­text and out­sider con­jec­ture on the Hard­ing case. The cast­ing feels like the most realised aspect of the film, but it’s not enough to car­ry the weight of such a com­plex story.

The ash­es of inter­est­ing com­men­tary about the inher­ent clas­sism in the pro­fes­sion­al ice skat­ing world, as well as the cult of the true crime celebri­ty in the 1980s, point to the dark­ness that lies at the cen­tre of the sto­ry. But Gillespie’s flip­pant biopic leans too heav­i­ly into light­ness. Not only does it remain odd­ly silent on Ker­ri­g­an, but it feels flip­pant about domes­tic abuse, with Harding’s vio­lent rela­tion­ships with both her moth­er and hus­band fre­quent­ly played off as pan­tomime slapstick.

It’s a mis­han­dled attempt at find­ing order in chaos, lean­ing heav­i­ly on sym­pa­thy for an unsym­pa­thet­ic lead. It’s ulti­mate­ly con­fused about what it wants to say about the con­se­quences of Harding’s actions.