Wednesday, May 29, 2019

Review of 'I, Tonya'

I enjoyed this way more than I expected to...I'm not very interested in sport, and less so in figure skating. I have only the dimmest recollection of the events it describes.

But this was very much the antithesis of the conventional sport film in which an underprivileged outsider triumphs over adversity through will power and determination. Here adversity triumphs over the underprivileged outsider, who very obviously has plenty of talent but nothing else - no contacts, no network, no social graces, and none of the insight that she might have needed to work out how to get by without those things.

It's well acted and shot in a way that seems to recall the nastier, shinier period it depicts.

From the film's narrative Tonya Harding actually got a rough deal - she doesn't seem to have done all that much wrong apart from choosing the wrong mother, and then the wrong husband who chose the wrong friends and associates. She seems to have been punished harder than she deserved for not dobbing her vile husband in, while others got off more lightly.

Watched on Amazon Prime.

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