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Ice Princess is a joyful journey back to 1994 when, for a few short weeks, figure skating actually mattered. This fact-based movie captures Nancy Kerrigan and Tonya Harding’s savage quest for Olympic gold. It faithfully recreates that wonderful-yet-brief time when we were allowed to peek beneath the gaudy costumes and ghastly make-up and see the sport in all of its marauding ugliness.

Michelle Trachtenberg gives a nuanced performance as Harding, the scrappy skater from the wrong side of the trailer park. Trachtenberg deftly conveys the dichotomy of Harding, a girl who one moment discusses the beauty of a triple toe loop and the next explains what beer goes best with pork rinds (Hamm’s).

Kirsten Olson plays Kerrigan, the physically graceful yet socially clumsy native of Massachusetts (the state whose motto ought to be “trailer trash without the trailers”). Kerrigan’s story emerges as a bigger tragedy than Harding’s because of what might have been. With the title of “America’s Sweetheart” in her grasp, she booted it, like Bill Buckner booted Mookie’s grounder in ‘86.

Trevor Blumas gives a suitably creepy performance as Jeff Gillooly, Harding’s husband and the man who hired thugs to maim Kerrigan at the Olympic Trials in Detroit. When the scheme fails and he realizes that there will be no lucrative Ice Capades deal for Tonya, he goes to “Plan B”, selling the honeymoon sex tapes of Tonya and himself. There is a fascinating complexity to Gillooly that leaves you wondering, “What was Plan C?”

Kim Cattrall pops up as Oksana Baiul, the perky Russian skater who defeated both Americans for the Gold Medal at Lillehammer, Norway. While press releases claim that Cattrall did all of her own skating in the movie, it is hard to believe that with a few weeks of training this aged actress could successfully land a double lutz or a triple salchow. Whether it’s her or not, the skating is sublime. Watch closely as she transitions from a counter choctaw glide into a flying camel with a precision not seen since Dick Button hanged up his skates fifty years ago.

Ice Princess shows how the Olympics have become a beautiful stage upon which the ugliness of unbridled human ambition is played out. In 1994, those twin Nike-clad beasts, Ego and Avarice, shed their disguises for a moment in time, and we confronted the dark side of the human soul. The film ends shrewdly with Kerrigan riding a float through Walt Disney World, unaware that an open microphone is capturing her whining about how “corny” it all was. Corny. Fittingly rich irony from a woman who dressed up like an off-Broadway transvestite and skated to Taco’s “Puttin’ on the Ritz.”

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