Tonya Harding is a name that lives in infamy. She whacked her rival Nancy Kerrigan's knee, or her ex-husband did, or her bodyguard hired some lowlifes. It's all a blur, happened in 1994, and it's figure-skating for chrissakes, who cares? Tonya cared, it killed her career. Nancy cared, and by extension so did Americans living vicariously because the Olympics threw an international spotlight on this rarified cat-fight. Tonya and Nancy are archetypes of ambition, rivalry, and who's a lady. The bad taste never went away, the mystery of human motivation clings like fog. "I, Tonya" dredges up the sordid saga and lays it out in new and startling ways that make you laugh and cry. Opens at Embarcadero Dec. 22, Alamo Drafthouse Dec. 29.
Before the images take over, an onscreen note: "Based on irony-free, wildly contradictory, totally true interviews with Tonya Harding and Jeff Gillooly." A brief prologue introduces the oddball cast of characters speaking self-punishing one-liners into the camera, each from her or his own habitat. Alison Janney, who steals much of the movie with her Buster Keaton dead-pan and dour bowl-cut, sits on a couch with an oxygen tank, its tube running under her nose, while the parrot on her shoulder nibbles her ear. She's LaVona, the self-sacrificing scourge, the white-trash booster rocket of her daughter's ascension, the abusive mother who bullied her kid to greatness.
Paul Walter Hauser is comic gold as Shawn Eckhardt, Tonya's bodyguard, a tub of lard with black button eyes and pencil mustache, a bad Xmas sweater, and a mind full of mayhem, still living with his folks. He does not appear to be acting. Most of his scenes are with Sebastian Stan as Jeff Gillooly, Tonya's husband, who was a nice guy until he started hitting her. Seeing her give as good as she gets establishes the culture of violence she called home. Shawn and Jeff concoct the plot to scupper Kerrigan, or maybe it's all Shawn's idea. Actually, "the incident," which will never achieve transparence, is not the most interesting thing about "Tonya," merely the most brazen moment in her 20-year scramble to be the best figure-skater in the world.
Fortysomething Tonya Harding sits at a kitchen table, consuming Marlboros and coffee, in a two-tone denim shirt, jeans, and cowboy boots. Margot Robbie plays Tonya with intensity reminiscent of Joan Crawford, with her expressive eyes and teeth. She doesn't have Tonya's small, sharp, elfin features, but portrayal is deeper than surface resemblance. She isn't short and doesn't have Tonya's thighs either, those tree trunks powering her elusive triple-axel jump. Robbie elicits our sympathy and respect on and off the ice. The illusion of her skating is so skillful we focus on the emotional price of the pursuit of perfection by an imperfect person.
The narrative flashes back 40 years from the talking heads to Portland, Oregon, where LaVona takes her tiny blonde daughter to the rink in quest of lessons. A chronic drinker and smoker, Lavona doesn't take no for an answer when the skating teacher tries to dismiss her. These early scenes of mother and daughter fighting the world and each other for her right to compete are the heart of the film. Tiny, tough, blonde, and passionate, McKenna Grace gives a stunning performance as young Tonya, proving that little girls can be portrayed like fully human beings. Her reaction when her dad drives away from home, leaving her alone with LaVona, rips a hole in the screen.
Director Craig Gillespie has reinvented the biopic, a notoriously dreary genre, by striking a hair-trigger balance between trauma and parody, mockumentary and melodrama, demolishing the fourth wall. Delusion is the unifying personality trait among the principals, but the mother's drive, the daughter's talent, and the bodyguard's surreal machinations twist reality into a highly regrettable Noir shambles. Steven Rogers' script toggles breezily between past and present, tracing Tonya's trajectory from baby steps through "the incident" to her monsterization by the media. Don't leave as final credits start rolling. Tonya Harding circa 1991 comes onscreen executing that triple axel, and it suddenly all makes sense.