Dir: Craig Gillespie

With: Margot Robbie, Allison Janney, Sebastian Stan

Runtime: 119 minutes

THOUGH it is fond of classical music, the inescapable naffness of figure skating will forever make it the country and western of winter sports. All those sequins and tan tights: shudder. As such, it should have welcomed Tonya Harding with open arms. Yet, as we see from this bleakly comic biopic, the ex-Olympian was not an easy gal to embrace. Likewise her mother, LaVona.

Mother and daughter are played here by Allison Janney and Margot Robbie, with the former delivering one of the finest Mommie Dearest turns in years. Having already won a Bafta and a Golden Globe, it will be a rum do if Janney does not make it a clean sweep come Oscar night on March 4. Margot Robbie is up for best actress.

The picture opens with the mother of all disclaimers, one that sets the tone for the movie to come. Instead of “inspired by real events”, Craig Gillespie’s film declares that it is “based on irony-free, wildly contradictory, totally true” interviews with Tonya Harding and her ex-husband Jeff Gillooly. In short, you pays your money and makes your own mind up about the ins and outs of the sporting scandal at the heart of the picture: the infamous attack on Harding’s rival, Nancy Kerrigan.

Gillespie (Lars and the Real Girl) tells the story as if making a documentary, with each of the main players having their say on events as we go along. Harding sits in a kitchen, all splayed, stonewashed denim-clad legs and defiance. Her mother, introducing Harding as “the fifth child from husband number four”, sits on a tatty couch, a bird on her shoulder (really), an oxygen tank to hand, pouring scorn wherever she can.

From these opening statements we cut to decades before and pushy parent LaVona is trying to strong-arm a reluctant coach into taking on the almost four-year-old Tonya. The song of choice is Devil Woman, hardly subtle but we get the message. (The entire soundtrack, complete with Laura Branigan’s Gloria and Supertramp’s Goodbye Stranger is cheesy MOR heaven.)

Swearing, boozing, smoking LaVona, with her bad perm and Deirdre Barlow specs, works all hours as a waitress to pay for her daughter’s coaching so that one day the youngster might get a spot on the Ice Capades tour. But it is clear from the start that Tonya, naturally gifted and fearless, could go much further than a touring dance show.

Gillespie charts her rise through the ranks and championships swiftly and entertainingly. As for how convincing Robbie is in the part of the figure skater who made history as the first American woman skater to land the triple axle, Tatiana S Riegel, film editor, has the picture’s third Oscar nomination.

While Harding could turn in beautiful performances on ice, the relationship between mother and daughter starts off ugly and stays that way. An equally unhappy marriage to Jeff Gillooly (Sebastian Stan) follows. None of this was a laughing matter, and Gillespie does not treat it as such, but the detailing of it sits oddly in a film that otherwise plays out like a farce.

Moreover, the way the movie tells it, between her background and the snooty attitudes she encountered, Harding was never given a fair shake. The attempt is made, not always convincingly, to link the way she was treated to America’s uneasy and scornful attitude towards its “redneck” poor. I, Tonya is on the whole a sympathetic portrayal, made more so by the always engaging Robbie, which may not sit well with some.

The shifts in tone become more awkward still when it comes to the attack. Gillespie is on firmer ground when he looks at the attendant media circus, with Bobby Cannavale putting in a juicy turn as a reporter explaining how the tale unfolded.

More of a problem is the absence of Janney in the film’s latter stages. Having dominated proceedings early on, her loss is felt keenly and the tale breezes towards the end when it should storm.

One for Bruce Lee fans, The Birth of the Dragon (***) is a dramatised account of the martial arts master’s career-shaping encounter with a Shaolin master. Set in San Francisco, George Nolfi’s film will please the MMA crowd as much as those in search of more answers as to what made Lee a legend.