“I, Tonya” is filmed in the original profanity. Not something for delicate ears. Nor is it fare for the gullible. Though the Tonya Harding character’s final words are, “That’s the [unprintable] truth,” it’s best to note the film’s opening alert that it is based on “irony-free” and “wildly contradictory” interviews. A word to the wise of the narrator’s possible inclination toward mendacity.

For those among us ink-stained wretches who covered the seriously bizarre 1994 Harding-Nancy Kerrigan Olympic uproar, “I, Tonya” offers Harding’s thoroughly familiar bunker mentality—but to the point that some scenes are complete fiction.

Even before her skating rival Kerrigan was clubbed on the knee during practice for the ’94 Olympic Trials and the FBI quickly fingered Harding’s associates, we knew of Harding’s defensiveness over a troubled past: That her abusive mother had been married six times, her absent father often was between jobs, her marriage to Jeff Gilloly was brief and occasionally violent. We knew that Harding suffered wracking asthma attacks but continued to smoke (though she repeatedly denied that) and that she was forever convinced of unfair treatment by skating judges.

All of that is in the movie. But so are events that appear to have happened only in Harding’s head. There is no evidence, for instance, that she ever marched up to a judging panel during a competition and cursed out the arbiters of success, or that she confronted one judge in a parking garage and was told that she simply didn’t “present the image we want to portray.”

Nor did the real Harding ever deliver a tearful plea when she was sentenced for her role in the attack on Kerrigan—another of the movie’s sympathetic takes on Harding.

As a dramatic device, it works to depict a moment when Harding’s coach supposedly informed her—after Harding’s disappointing fourth-place finish at the 1992 Olympics—that the International Olympic Committee “announced today” it was moving the next Winter Games up by two years, to ’94. In fact, that IOC decision had been made seven years earlier.

Also, to hammer home Harding’s conviction that the entire world doubted her skating, the celluloid Tonya is faced with a male fan harassing her just prior to a competition. Anyone who has spent time around the sport knows there never is any heckling in the prim world of figure skating.

Even the film’s depiction of incessant reproach by Harding’s mother—so well played by Allison Janney that she has been awarded an Oscar—appears to be taken out of the real-life time line. Though theirs unquestionably was a difficult relationship, Harding’s mother was essentially out of her life years before Harding’s peak skating years.

In truth, Harding was not a victim of judging favoritism. The subjective scoring, arcane as it can be, made her the 1991 national champion and ’91 world silver medalist and qualified her for two Olympic teams despite a steady deterioration in her skating power. Having made her mark as the first American woman to land the monster 3 ½-rotation triple axel in competition, at the ’91 nationals, she struggled mightily with her jumps thereafter, repeatedly falling at the marquee competitions. Harding’s complaints about under-financing also were at odds with the skating federation’s records of significant economic support, as well as accounts by her then-agent Michael Rosenberg.

But it’s a movie, no? Some things are exaggerated. There are reviews out there that have described “I, Tonya” as a mockumentary, a satire. The cinematography is top-notch and the acting terrific and, in the end, the details may not be as important as the overall impression left on the popcorn crowd.

Perhaps we should consider the Chinese model. I’m told that, instead of translations faithful to the original English, the Chinese often create their interpretation of a movie with their own title and that, in this case, have re-branded “I, Tonya” to “Obnoxious Woman.”

And I think of the chaotic Harding press conference in Lillehammer, Norway, days before Harding’s 1994 Olympic skate (when she crashed into eighth place while Kerrigan finished second). Even after her ex-husband had ratted on her and the FBI closed in, Harding still was denying any role in the Kerrigan mugging.

Twenty-two years later, after seeing “I, Tonya,” let me paraphrase the New York Times’ Jere Longman’s question to Harding that day: “You have lied to us so many times, why should we believe you now?”