Film: I, Tonya

Another midweek film I'd never got around to seeing - this week, it was I, Tonya, where Margot Robbie plays disgraced skater Tonya Harding, who was implicated in an attack on a competitor, Nancy Kerrigan. Allison Janney plays Tonya's mother.

Well, I'm very glad to have seen it! I think it's supposed to be quite an accurate depiction of Tonya's life - but for all the sad story it tells, it's fast-paced, and peppered with plenty of humour. Even the violent bits. And the soundtrack is excellent. The implication of the film - and of some academic studies of the story - is that Tonya was somewhat picked on because of her lower-class background; judges like female skaters to conform to some idealised vision of womanhood. And so she always found it hard to get ahead - she finally blew everyone away, however, with her sheer talent. And yes, there's some beautiful skating in it - doubles were used, of course.

Both Margot Robbie and Allison Janney are compelling, and really carry the film. Margot is excellent as the little girl who just wants to skate, her tough demeanour melting at the end as she realises that she's been banned from competitive skating - and for something she honestly had no part in! (It was her ex-husband's idea to attack Nancy Kerrigan.) Meantime, Allison Janney is frightful as the pushy, pushy, pushy mother who strips Tonya's life of everything but skating. I felt so sorry for Tonya at the end of this - she was fighting an uphill battle all along. Highly recommended. (Oh, and thank goodness it finished when it did - the tv signal dropped shortly afterwards, and hasn't yet returned! I've reported it.)

With nothing online on Meetup for Saturday - apart from something on the BBC iPlayer, which I can't access here - I'm thinking film again. Next most interesting at the same rating is Meet John Doe, a Frank Capra film in which Barbara Stanwyck plays a reporter, about to be fired, who comes up with a story about some guy willing to kill himself to make a political protest. When the story grows legs, Gary Cooper steps in as the character in question. Does sound interesting.

And on Sunday, London Social Detours is hosting a "virtual visit to the Galapagos", complete with a chat about Charles Darwin. So, off I go again with them. Includes a quiz, apparently, for which the prize is one of the millions of books the organiser says her house is full of. Hmm..