Molecule Review: I, Tonya (7 Stars)

Rating: 7/10 (11 August 2018)

I, Tonya is a film about nearly everything. It has a woman skater (Margot Robbie) being ruthlessly trained on her mother's (Allison Janney) insistence since she was 4; it has domestic abuse; and it has a stupid crime. Yet what has stayed with me after I completed watching the movie was an exchange of dialogues between Robbie's character, Tonya Harding, and another who judged her skating performance few minutes ago and gave a bad rating. She asks why was she being rated low, to which the judge replies that performance is not only about skating, you have to project yourself as a good American from a wholesome family. "Why can't it be only about skating?", Harding asks and the judge drives away without an answer. I love that scene, and a plenty more in director Craig Gillespie's I, Tonya because it chafes the reality and serves it with dark comedy. I don't know if I laughed out loud in any of the scenes, but everyone in the cast look like they travelled back 20 years to play life, and I did chuckle a lot. Most notable Janney, Robbie, and Sebastian Stan in that order. I, Tonya is less about the sport and more about what external stimuli can do to someone who plays it. A good watch because it's a very well-made and objective film and not your usual biopic. TN.