Author: Pony
The Olympic flame was slowly extinguished in Pyeongchang, and the Winter Olympics officially entered "Beijing time". In recent years, with the progress and breakthroughs of Chinese athletes in their respective sports, the national popularity of ice and snow sports is also steadily improving.
However, behind the bright appearance of athletes, how much bitterness is hidden? The Hollywood awards season hit "I, Tonya" showed people the fall of a good player with a unique shooting method.
Different from the mainstream "inspirational" and "hot-blooded" themes of biographical films, "I, Queen of Flowers" is based on the scandals of the American sports world and presents a black comedy of complete disillusionment.
The disillusionment of the American Dream may be due to the lack of spiritual support in "The Great Gatsby", or it can be due to the delicious laziness in "Florida Paradise".
But in this film, it's hard to give the pot to a major element, because the story of athlete Tanya Harding (Margot Robbie) is too complicated.
The first obstacle is the "unspoken rules" of figure skating.
Different from our national system, learning figure skating abroad requires high costs, so most of the players come from the elite class and have a decent image.
But Tanya Harding was born into a low-class Red Neck family. Each had a fur coat, hers a patchwork of grey rabbit feathers from hunting; a gorgeous race suit, sewn by her mother and her.
It can be said that Tanya has never tasted the taste of "superiority" in her life, and has been going against the "unspoken rules" of figure skating. As a result, she was always unpopular with the referee and suffered from unfair scoring.
Second, there is the unfortunate family of origin.
Tanya was born to her mother, Lavona (Alison Jenny), and her fifth husband, and was her fourth child. Since Tanya was 4 years old, her mother took her to the ice rink system to learn how to skate. But the mother did not treat Tanya gently, on the contrary, she always abused, beat, and even did not allow Tanya to go to the toilet during training time. Mentally devastating, the most deadly.
Incidentally, such an epic mother is really a steal, and Alison Jenny also swept the awards season for best supporting actress with her three-point performance, and finally won the Oscar.
Alison Jenny's Acceptance Speech: I did it all by myself
Then, it's unladylike.
Growing up, Tanya meets and marries a man, Jeff (Sebastian Stan), opening another nightmare. Tanya and Jeff have always been in "love and kill each other" mode, Jeff frequently committed domestic violence against her, and Tanya also fought back, but they have not been able to break off the relationship.
Jeff's friends are as unreliable as he is. According to the film, his fox dog friend Sean (Paul Walter Hauser) is a god stick, almost single-handedly ruining Tanya's career, making the audience grit their teeth.
In the end, Tanya herself is actually to blame.
Although the film does not directly draw conclusions, although it may be deceived and induced by Jeff, it has to be admitted that Tanya, driven by lust, is at least partially aware of the attack on competitors. This also directly changed the trajectory of her own life.
Although Tanya has always been quite different from the "elegant" image of figure skaters in the eyes of the audience, this regret of chasing dreams is lamentable, and this kind of struggle that is more and more frustrated is thought-provoking.
"I, Queen of Flowers" is like this, using the perspective of a pseudo-documentary to tell a story of the shattering of the American dream.
The film constantly inserts multi-angle character narratives in the main plot, and specially uses two or more opposing statements to avoid the suspicion of whitewashing.
At the same time, it adopts a method similar to "House of Cards" and "Big Short", constantly breaking the fourth wall to interact directly with the audience. These all provide the tone of black comedy.
Here, of course, we should highlight the heroine Margot Robbie. In order to get close to Tanya's muscular figure, she obviously needs to gain weight like crazy. In order to show excellent visual effects, she spent four or five months practicing skating in the early stage, 5 days a week, 4 hours a day.
Left: Tanya Harding Right: Margot Robbie
Stretching on the ice, a timely emotional outburst, Margot Robbie has finally proven herself far above the "vase" level.
She is no longer the "countess" of all kinds, nor is she the cute and charming clown girl, she is the strong ice dancer.
"Winter Soldier" Sebastian Stein also dedicated plastic surgery level acting skills, it is difficult to find his true identity without looking at the cast, and screenwriter Stephen Rogers and the same name as the US team also provide a momentary talk for fans.
At the end of the film, Tanya, who switched to boxing because of her ban, is knocked down by her opponent. In the picture, she rises in the air, just as stunning as the three and a half weeks of jumping in that year.
This is Tanya's story, a black comedy about "failure to succeed".