I, Tonya (Dir Craig Gillespie, 1h 59)

 At the centre of the riveting I Tonya,  a retelling, in Rashomon meets rolling news meets candid interviews, of the rise and fall and rise again in the career of outsider Tonya Harding (Margot Robbie), her stormy relationship with her husband Jeff Gillooly (Sebastian Stan), and with her demeaning, cruel and abusive mother LaVona Fay Golden (Allison Janney), is the sense that this film is a story about a small group of broken, dysfunctional people for whom "there is no thing as the truth. Everyone has their own truth". Thus, in a fractured, and deeply personal film, that leads first to the moment that thrust her into the limelight, as the first successful American skater to complete a  triple axle to the truly shocking moment that defined and indeed vilified Harding in the eyes of the American public, with the attack on fellow athlele Nancy Kerrigan by associates of her husband. Yet, despite its entertaining, bleakly funny tone, there is a sense of something missing from the heart of the film that would have pushed into into the ranks of truly great sports films.

Certainly, I Tonya is a film in love with the artform of skating; there is a dynamism both in the movement of the camera and the editing in the skating sequences-but for the Japanese hit anime, Yuri!! On Ice, skating has never been so dynamic, so effortless looking, and yet so emotive-when Harding finally hits her triple axle, it's beautifully shot, slowed down to a balletic spreading of wings, and clearly defines her character to an extent that it changes her life to a "before and after" period. It's also an scene that the film returns to several times, most effectively at the film's denouement, when her post-skating career as a female boxer, taking a punch to the face, her moment of utter desperation, is devastatingly inter-cut with her moment of greatest triumph. Elsewhere, the skating action is excellently portrayed and filmed-we get a great sense of Tonya's ability as a skater, as well as her changing and improving ability-if one critique can be levelled against it, it's that her ability is occasionally lost in swirling and slightly messy camera work.

Away from the rink, however, the film is less perfectly executed;  the film's abutting versions of the truth leads to some darkly comic moments, with Tonya levelling and firing a gun at Jeff before turning to the camera to exclaim that this, in fact never happened. Whilst this is occasionally perfectly timed, with an almost deadpan back and forth commentary between their present day selves, and occasionally with, as previously indicated, Rashomon-esque different versions popping up, they just as commonly seem to undermine Tonya's likabilty as a protagonist.

 Indeed, for all the work the film does to set her up as a victim of a cruel mother, who lives vicariously through her skating successes, complaining that if she had been treated properly she would not have been half the athlete she is, a violent husband, together with his deluded crony, and, as she directly castigates us, the American public (and by inference, the world), we find out little about Tonya, other than as a victim, a champion, or a villainess. Whilst a few scenes in her childhood show her as a surprisingly driven, if violent, child, we too often see her through the prism of the other people in her life, rather than in her own words-if more scenes from the present day had been incorporated, of an older, wiser Tonya riling against her infamy, the film could have felt more focused, more Tonya in her own words.
 
 The film's humour is certainly perfectly pitched, wickedly dark in places, focusing around several broken, extremely dysfunctional people, and their relationships with each other-it is also a perfect attack on both the rolling news culture, and a skewering observation of the celebrity and sporting culture-Tonya's outsider status, as a self-made, self-determined figure, who skates to heavy metal, who sews her own costumes, and who riles against the restraints of the sport, and deeply classist nature of skating. In short, the film finally does turn to Tonya's side, albeit grudgingly.

Thus, I Tonya, much like its protagonist, is a flawed but still stunning picture; it may contradict itself wildly at points, but at its finale, it seeks to at least partly vindicate its heroine, painting her as a truly American heroine, and a true pioneer within her sport, despite her background

Rating: Highly Recommended