I, Tonya (15.)
Directed by Gary Gillespie.
Starring Margot Robbie, Sebastian Stan, Allison Janney, Paul Walker Hauser, Julianne Nicholson and Bobby Cannavale. 119 mins.
This is a film that goes wrong right from the poster, maybe even the title. Like writers trying to co-opt the phrase Fear and Loathing for their work, the title gives itself airs and graces even as it reveals a chronic failure of imagination. Underneath that title is Margot Robbie in her skating costume and with a defiant "Yere, What?" look on her face, trying to persuade us that she's Tonya Harding. You, Tonya? I don't think so. I may not know much about ice skating but I know that the Margot Robbie role in that story is not plucky, scrappy, unloved, redneck underdog Tonya Harding, but elegant, privileged princess Nancy Kerrigan, the rival skater destined to receive a crowbar to the knee in a plot emanating from Tonya's ex-husband.
Except Nancy Kerrigan can't be the Robbie role because Kerrigan isn't a role in this film. The film is all about Harding, turning her life into a restless, garish, underclass pantomime, a piece of knockabout brawlderville, full of domestic violence and fourth wall breaks. The cast of characters is like a cross between Shameless and The Addams Family. Tonya's ghoulish and unloving mother (a piece of epic deadpan by Janney; at times she seems engaged in a stare out contest with the audience) encourages her talent on the ice and then wants to sabotage her career. To get away from her, she marries an abusive berk (Stan) and constantly runs up against the snobbery of the ice skating judges who don't want this trailer trash representing them at the Olympics.
The film makes a big point about how unreliable its narrative is, with the participants being shown in interviews contradicting each other, which is handy for a film that wants it every which way, but primarily loose. The script isn't really committed to any line in terms of who did what and is shifty in the response it is searching for from audiences. You are offered ample opportunities to laugh at the stupid hicks, and to do so through the protective layer of various distancing devices, such as having people talking straight to camera: you're not quite laughing at them, you're laughing through them. But then it wants us to see this as a Me Too tale of a female resilience, a woman struggling against a family that treats her as a punchbag and a society that continually wants to put and keep her down. And then, after trying to sucker us in, it turns on audiences and condemns us for our prurient, tabloid interest in the attack.
Casting Robbie as Harding does her a disservice. Her body shape is wrong: Harding was squat and not pretty; that, as much as her background was what counted against her. She had the talent but it just didn't seem to sit well on her. Her tearful smile of triumph is like Laura Dern's quivering dog-biscuit shaped look of anguish in Blue Velvet. Robbie is tall and slender and has a generic blonde beauty that doesn't suggest struggle. I certainly didn't receive any ballot paper for a Margot Robbie Stardom referendum, and however it was achieved her stardom was presented to us a fait-accompli. One minute she was a supporting role in Wolf Of Wall Street and next she was a big name cameo in The Big Short. Since then she's been not much more than adequate in Tarzan and Suicide Squad. I'm sure she has had to fight for everything she's got but no matter how much she tries to scrub down for this role, it can't banish the glint of entitlement.
Directed by Gary Gillespie.
Starring Margot Robbie, Sebastian Stan, Allison Janney, Paul Walker Hauser, Julianne Nicholson and Bobby Cannavale. 119 mins.
This is a film that goes wrong right from the poster, maybe even the title. Like writers trying to co-opt the phrase Fear and Loathing for their work, the title gives itself airs and graces even as it reveals a chronic failure of imagination. Underneath that title is Margot Robbie in her skating costume and with a defiant "Yere, What?" look on her face, trying to persuade us that she's Tonya Harding. You, Tonya? I don't think so. I may not know much about ice skating but I know that the Margot Robbie role in that story is not plucky, scrappy, unloved, redneck underdog Tonya Harding, but elegant, privileged princess Nancy Kerrigan, the rival skater destined to receive a crowbar to the knee in a plot emanating from Tonya's ex-husband.
Except Nancy Kerrigan can't be the Robbie role because Kerrigan isn't a role in this film. The film is all about Harding, turning her life into a restless, garish, underclass pantomime, a piece of knockabout brawlderville, full of domestic violence and fourth wall breaks. The cast of characters is like a cross between Shameless and The Addams Family. Tonya's ghoulish and unloving mother (a piece of epic deadpan by Janney; at times she seems engaged in a stare out contest with the audience) encourages her talent on the ice and then wants to sabotage her career. To get away from her, she marries an abusive berk (Stan) and constantly runs up against the snobbery of the ice skating judges who don't want this trailer trash representing them at the Olympics.
The film makes a big point about how unreliable its narrative is, with the participants being shown in interviews contradicting each other, which is handy for a film that wants it every which way, but primarily loose. The script isn't really committed to any line in terms of who did what and is shifty in the response it is searching for from audiences. You are offered ample opportunities to laugh at the stupid hicks, and to do so through the protective layer of various distancing devices, such as having people talking straight to camera: you're not quite laughing at them, you're laughing through them. But then it wants us to see this as a Me Too tale of a female resilience, a woman struggling against a family that treats her as a punchbag and a society that continually wants to put and keep her down. And then, after trying to sucker us in, it turns on audiences and condemns us for our prurient, tabloid interest in the attack.
Casting Robbie as Harding does her a disservice. Her body shape is wrong: Harding was squat and not pretty; that, as much as her background was what counted against her. She had the talent but it just didn't seem to sit well on her. Her tearful smile of triumph is like Laura Dern's quivering dog-biscuit shaped look of anguish in Blue Velvet. Robbie is tall and slender and has a generic blonde beauty that doesn't suggest struggle. I certainly didn't receive any ballot paper for a Margot Robbie Stardom referendum, and however it was achieved her stardom was presented to us a fait-accompli. One minute she was a supporting role in Wolf Of Wall Street and next she was a big name cameo in The Big Short. Since then she's been not much more than adequate in Tarzan and Suicide Squad. I'm sure she has had to fight for everything she's got but no matter how much she tries to scrub down for this role, it can't banish the glint of entitlement.
