I, Tonya

With the Academy Award season now but a distant memory (still ecstatic that del Toro and The Shape of Water won what they did) it's time to play catch up. While I was pretty happy with having seen most of the heavy hitters from this year's picks, there are still several films floating around that I couldn't quite fit in before the Big Night and also didn't get the wider recognition that they quite deserved. One of them is I, Tonya. Which is a bit a shame because it's well worth your time.

The film covers what is potentially one of the oddest incidents in the history of professional sport. Tonya Harding (Margot Robbie) was a controversial figure skater who became the first American woman to complete the incredibly tricky Triple Axel manoeuvre during a competition. After overcoming various obstacles, Harding made it through to America's Winter Olympic Team in 1994. However, her world came crashing down when, through a bizarre series of circumstances, Harding's husband, Jeff Gillooy (Stan Sebastian) ended up becoming the instigator of a successful attack on fellow US figure skating competitor Nancy Kerrigan. This all but dashed any chance of Harding had of continuing professionally in the sport. Harding instantly become one of the most reviled figures in sport ... and I, Tonya seeks to explore who this woman actually was and where she came from.

I, Tonya is a great little film that give plenty of opportunities for its great cast to shine

One thing that does really work in the film's favour is the heightened sense of unreality. This is clearly a glossy, ficitonalised take on the proceedings and the film doesn't shy away from this. In true Martin Scorsese-style fashion, we are treated to fake interviews after the fact, characters directly breaking the fourth wall to explain things to the audience, quick pan cinematography, even quicker edits and the ever so slightly cartoonish speed of the figure skating action, sprinkled with dashes of delicious black comedy. For a story with plenty of contradicting elements and heresay, going for a style and narrative that is borderline unreliable is probably the smartest move director Craig Gillespie could make. And for the most part, the whole thing works really well. The narrative rockets along at a satisfying pace, hitting all the key moments of Harding's life. The ice skating routines themselves are thrilling and expertly handled. You will believe that Margot Robbie can ice skate like a champion! Speaking of which, and it goes without saying, Margot Robbie is just excellent as Tonya. She successfully rides the line of making Tonya a very flawed, but still very rootable, human being. No easy feat to pull off. She has a lot to deal with - abusive husband and mother, her own hang-ups with anger issues, judgement from the wider figure skating world for her "white trash upbringing"; all this though doesn't stop her drive to be a champion. 

Alison Janney plays Tonya's mother LaVona, in a well-deserved Oscar winning turn that is just terrific. Being somewhat at the centre of many of Tonya's hang up and neurosis, LaVona is a very complicated and an often cruel woman but argues that this is what made her daughter into a champion pushing her into the sport at the very early age after understanding her natural talent. Vicious and abusive, Janney is just engrossing in her performance. And it's the relationship between Robbie and Janney that serves as the crux of the film. I guess this and Lady Bird marks 2018 as the year of destructive mother / daughter relationships! 

Rounding off the main cast is Sebstain Stan as Jeff Gillooy, the man who, through some levels of stupidity, ended up orchestrating the attack on Kerrigan. The warning signs are there pretty early on with him levelling some fairly brutal forms of abuse lat Tonya. Stan, probably most famous at the moment for playing Bucky Barnes i.e. the Winter Solider in the Marvel films, displays varying degrees of sophistication in his performance as Gillooly and is almost unrecognisable in the retrospective interviews. He is somewhat of a walking contradiction, and Stan just gets lost in the character. 

Alison Janney gives an Oscar winning performance as Tonya's cruel mother, LaVona

With a great cast in tow, the film just glides from excellent scene to excellent scene at a breakneck pace, quickly covering the complete arc of Tonya's early life, leading up to the "incident", as the film dubs it. I do think the film loses a bit of steam around this middle point, ironically when it starts to show the machinations about how the "incident" came into play. The scenes are fine, it just loses some of the drive and central focus. When we shift back to Tonya and how it starts to affect her career, it becomes all engrossing again. It's not that it's bad or anything, I just didn't find Paul Walter Hauser's Shawn, who has self-appointed himself as Tonya's largely useless body guard, all that funny and wished the focus would shift back to the titular character.

Overall though, I, Tonya is a terrific blast of energy that trips up only a couple of times towards its big finish finale. Robbie and Janney give some all time great performances that highlight the complexities of trying to succeed in a world out to get you.  The film's zippy pace and black comedy make it an entertaining ride but it also doesn't shy away from the more tragic elements. The credits treat you to authentic footage of the real Tonya Harding ice skating, along with interviews from the real people involved, and it all becomes abundantly clear. Yes, this strange and kind of sad tale was real. This actually happened. So if you're in need of an underappreciated little gem from this year's Oscar season, I, Tonya will more than scratch that itch. And maybe get you interested in figure skating. Maybe.