Film Review: I, Tonya

The film begins with an interview to camera, where Tonya Harding (Margot Robbie) sits in a kitchen in cowboy boots, talking about her skating career with a cigarette in hand. The scene then cuts to her at eight years old, where her mother LaVona (Alison Janney) watches through the thick frames of her oversized glasses as Tonya skates rings around the other young girls. Her mother is cruel, forcing her to skate until she wets herself as the fellow parents look on in horror, but LaVona is unfazed, topping up her coffee with whiskey and continuing to hurl abuse at her daughter.

As she grows into her awkward teen years, Tonya meets a young Jeff Gillooly (Sebastian Stan) and quickly becomes infatuated with him despite her mother chaperoning all their dates. She goes on to marry Jeff against her mother's wishes and commits her life to becoming a figure skating champion, training every hour of the day. But after a host of mediocre scores at competitions and some choice words with the judges, she decides the only way to impress them is to attempt the triple axel at the 1991 U.S. Figure Skating Championship, a move never before attempted in US figure skating history.

Here we see the most stylistic sequence in the film, as the music begins for Tonya’s routine, the camera follows her in a continuous sweeping shot with each move captured from tip to toe in a constant flow around the ice. As she dreamed, she lands the triple axel, to huge cheers from the crowd, cementing her as the first American woman to ever complete the turn. But her happiness doesn't last for long, as her home life becomes increasingly abusive, eventually leading Tonya to file a restraining order against her husband.

The events cause Tonya to spiral, falling mid-routine in the 1992 Winter Olympics, she returns home empty-handed. Her hopes are dashed, but the announcement of the next Olympics being only two years away gives her a chance to try again. But she has to get back on the nations good side and fix the damage that the previous loss did to her public image.

So in an attempt to appear the epitome of a wholesome American family, she reluctantly goes back to Jeff. But during a competition a year before the 94’ Olympic Winter Games, she receives a death threat and is too shaken to compete. Falling behind her competitor US skater Nancy Kerrigen, Jeff suggests that he send a similar threat to Nancy in the form of a letter, to even out the playing field. But as a shady deal goes down between Jeff and a friend to organise the letters delivery, the plan takes a dark turn, resulting in a brutal event, referred to as ‘the incident’ that changed Tonya’s life forever.

The films breaking of the fourth wall might initially seem a bold choice, but as they alternate between the interviews and the breaks to camera mid-sequence, it begins to blend together seamlessly. The star of these sequences is, of course, the producer of the film Margot Robbie, who is fantastic at narrating the story with inconsistent and contradictory versions of the truth. But the stand out performance of this film is without a doubt Alison Janney, who is spectacular as the bitter, foul-mouthed, violent mother.

I, Tonya is a film that surrounds figure skating, but within it has both laugh out loud comedy and painful realism. Concentrating on the nauseating highs and lows of being a famous figure in America, it does a great job of commenting on the public humiliation that accompanies a nationwide scandal. Overall, it does a wonderful job of depicting an unlikely stars fall from grace and the questionable truths that still surround her life.

I, Tonya is screening at Broadway Cinema until Thursday 15th March

Trailer