Craig Gillespie’s frenetic biopic of disgraced figure skater Tonya Harding, isn’t exactly brimming with love for its characters. Based on wildly contradictory interviews conducted with Harding and her ex-husband Jeff Gillooly, the film attempts to piece together the extraordinary sequence of events leading up to one of the biggest scandals in American sporting history, the 1994 assault of Harding’s arch-rival Nancy Kerrigan. Margot Robbie channels Harding’s spiky, combative spirit to mesmerising effect, while Allison Janney is alternately hilarious and terrifying as her jaw-droppingly vicious mother. But there’s an uncomfortable sense that Gillespie is sneering at his dysfunctional protagonists, resulting in a cartoonish tone that sits awkwardly with the film’s depictions of domestic abuse. And I could really have lived without the Wolf of Wall Street-esque fourth-wall breaking. The final product is less Scorsese, more sub-par David O. Russell.
I, Tonya | Directed by Craig Gillespie (US 2017) with Margot Robbie, Allison Janney. Starts March 22.
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