Mommie dearest on ice

Film review: I, Tonya

MANILA, Philippines — There will be many among us who still recall the 1994 Winter Olympics, and were glued watching the media hailstorm that chronicled the rivalry of US figure skaters Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan. Some may even have watched Tonya in 1991 become the first American woman to complete the triple axel during a competition. But almost all of us following the extended story would have cast Tonya as a villain, as the person who planned the attack on Nancy’s knee; recalling the video footage of Nancy on the floor, crying “Why... why?” Without a doubt, it was one of the most infamous scandals in sports history — and it lies at the center of this film treatment of Tonya.

I, Tonya is no Ice Castles or Holiday On Ice; and structurally, it plays like a mock documentary, with Tonya (Margot Robbie) and ex-husband Jeff Gillooly (Sebastian Stan) being interviewed today, and looking back on the events of 1994, and earlier. As screen writer Steven Rogers recounts, what struck him as he began work on the screenplay was how different the versions of Tonya and Jeff were — and that became the germ of an idea of how to bring this film to vivid life.

Director Craig Gillespie, on the other hand, was intrigued by how, if there was something the versions of Tonya and Jeff agreed upon, it was what kind of a horror story of a mother LaVona Golden (Allison Janney) was to Tonya. And thanks to the flashbacks employed in this film, we get this foul-mouthed, cursing and swearing, chain-smoking Mother from Hell in all her dubious glory.

The approach taken to present this lurid melodrama is to treat it like a black comedy — similar to say, how M.A.S.H. took the Korean War and came up with a comedy filled with irony. This works great for a contemporary audience mining the film for pure laughs; but there is something more serious behind the film. For the film is about personages who are still alive; and in the case of Tonya, living under the dark shadow of how the world judged her back then. While definitely not out to exonerate her, the film does ask some hard questions, and to an extent, portrays her as a victim of her circumstances.

More athletic and powerful than graceful or lithe, Tonya was always the talented outcast — condemned as “cheap white trash.” And in what has to be regarded as a “tour de force” performance (confirmed by sweeping the Best Supporting Actress nods of all the awards so far), we have the influence LaVonda cast over the life of her daughter, Tonya. This helps create layers within the film; and while not all layers are pulled off with equal success, it does make for a riveting biopic. At times over the top and even cartoonish but never boring, here is a film about ambition, about memory, about competition and excellence, and about the Mommie Dearest of Ice Skating.