I, Tonya (2017)

I, TONYA  (2017)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Craig Gillespie
    Margot Robbie, Sebastian Stan, Allison Janney,
    Julianne Nicholson, Paul Walter Hauser, 
    Bobby Cannavale, Caitlin Carver, Bojana Novakovik
Tonya Harding's story, told in Harding's own words, or something close to them, the wild, cautionary tale of a white-trash kid from Portland, Oregon, who survived horrifying abuse at the hands of her mother, and more horrifying abuse at the hands of her husband, clawed her way to the top of the figure-skating world, and watched it all come crashing down with the infamous Nancy Kerrigan knee-capping incident. The movie suggests that in some significant ways, Harding never had a chance. Ruthlessly pushed to excel on the ice - she dropped out of high school to devote more time to skating - she never tried to conceal her blue-collar background or tone down her tough-girl manner. She couldn't, or wouldn't, it didn't matter which. In a sport that rewards young women who project an aura of class (Kerrigan, for example), Tonya was unmistakably from the wrong side of the ice. Her athleticism was beyond dispute, but the judges hated her. Margot Robbie plays the wounded, combative Harding. Sebastian Stan plays Jeff Gillooly, her louse of a husband. Allison Janney plays the mother from hell, and gives a terrifying performance. There's a queasy sort of humor running through the film, but most of what happens is anything but funny. For of all her momentary fame and success, it's hard to imagine anybody wanting to trade places with Tonya Harding. The media coverage in the 1990s turned her into a tabloid joke, but if her own account is even partly true - and the movie's approach to the truth is admittedly squishy - she was also much more: the remarkably gutsy survivor and heroic central figure in a distinctly American tragedy.