The Tracey Fragments

Wow. Like a manic depressive answer to "Run Lola Run". "The Tracey Fragments", is the story of 15 year old girl (Ellen Page), who is self described as "a normal teenage girl who hates herself", the movie is told mostly out of chronological order, ...(read more)but we open with images of Tracey riding a bus, wrapped in a curtain and looking out the windows in a blizzard, hating the world, and obsessed with finding her missing brother Sunny. Like the title says Tracey is fragmented, and visually this translates into everything in the film occurring on multiple screens at once. At first this smacks of art school excess but none of the juxtapositions are random, they really do highlight elements of Tracey's personality. Traumatized and delusional Tracey's life in one scene resembles the paneled grids of a comic book she reads, in another it resembles a trailer for an imagined film about her life, a music video with she and her rocker love interest (the Lou Reed looking "new boy" Billy Zero(real name Slim Twig)), in another a magazine diced up with future interviews. Aside from fantasizing Tracey mainly distorts her own trauma and problems (she is not a reliable narrator), the other kids at school both male and female are improbably hostile about Tracey's small breasts, because this is how Tracey feels rather than what her life is. Similarily Tracey's psychologist is an androgynous looking man in drag(in Tracey's mind, both Mother and Father figure, she later asks to movie in with in him). Of course, a lot of the Tracey Fragments is difficult to piece together because some vignettes seem completely delusional while others at least seem to bear the scars of realism. Constantly showing events from a multiplicity of angles of highlights Tracey's self consciousness, always observing herself as she participates doubting everything, "how can anything be true if everything is in your head", she wonders at one point. Really this movie is little like Run Lola Run, save they're both indie films, highly inventive in terms of script, editing, cinematography, and direction, and both have commanding lead actresses. The stylization is as exciting as the material is difficult, were poured straight into the mind of a unstable, angry,and terrified, teenage less sexed Kathy Acker heroin, raging with guilt. (Spoiler in next paragraph) The films clearest moment Tracey finding her brothers hat near a snow bank in a simple wide shot, slowly lines like cracks in ice slowly appear up the screen dividing the image into multiple shots of the lake, as Tracey's mind literally fragments and looks away to avoid the obvious. The Tracey Fragments, is a tense psychological study, and bleak coming of age tale, highly and effectively stylized into something greater than the sum of it's parts. It's disturbing, tragic, but also a really unique film experience, and easily one of best films of 2007

http://eattheblinds.blogspot.com You can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig. As of late, this phrase has been front-page headlines for all the wrong reasons, but regardless, the meaning behind it stays the same. For all intents and purposes, Bruce McDonald's The Tracey Fragments is a melodrama of After-School Special proportions, regardless of how hard the director (and his editor) try to dress it up as something more profound. Fragmented images act as multiple windows, forming an endlessly elaborate collage, peering into the dark recesses of 15 year-old Tracey Berkowitz's life and mind. This technique has been around for decades, it's origins forever tied to the annals of experimental film-making. Long before Bruce McDonald, the work of Stan Brakhage (the most prolific and famed of all experimentalists) was co-opted by music videos directors who made famous the disjointed, stylistic flourishes common to MTV in the 1980's. TTF looks and feels more like a music video than a conventional narrative film and since most kids who grew up on music videos have come of age, stylistically TTF cannot define itself as anything new. But amidst a mine field of cookie cutter Hollywood films, TTF does manage to distinguish itself as something more than the melodrama it merely is. If you can make it through the first 20-minutes you'll be rewarded, since at this point there seems to be a departure from the conventions of story telling into the hyper-personal, interior realm of a 15 year-old kid struggling with herself, her family and the unforgiving world around her. This portrayal may be framed within the plot driven melodrama, but McDonald reaches beyond plot by emphasizing the impressionistic quality of the visual collage he has painstakingly cobbled together. This is when the film becomes interesting, when the visuals take over and expand the film watching experience into something haunting and poetic. The dreariness and drab of Tracey's lower-class life transcends into something beautiful as each frame of her collage acts as a window into her soul. Ultimately, TTF's greatest asset is it's ability to effectively portray the mixed up mind of a teenager who is desperately trying to make sense of her world. We've all been there and we've all lived it, now you can relive the experience only this time, without the acne scars.

Even if it was the first film to use "Mondrian multi-frame compositions" from start to finish, this will only appeal to you if you're a) an angst-ridden 15 year old girl, b) an Ellen Page fan or relative, or c) a misled fan of "Juno" who thinks anything with Ellen is better than anything else. The split screen (aka "Mondrian multi-frame compositions") is pretentious and ineffective except in a few selective sequences. It does work occasionally, but almost by accident -- I bet it even surprised the director when it did. This is an art-film gone mad. Ellen is excellent playing a less-fun, and far less funny, version of Juno in a family-hell situation. Recommended if you are fighting insomnia, this is possibly the longest 77 minute film of all time.

If it's true, as Marshall McLuhan has suggested, that the medium is indeed the message, then "The Tracey Fragments" proves that theory in spades. This highly idiosyncratic work has as its focal point "Tracey Berkowitz - 15 - just another girl who hates herself" - a description that comes straight from the mouth of Ms. Berkowitz herself. Tracey is a deeply unhappy youngster who hates her (admittedly horrible) parents, is terrorized by all the "cool" kids in school for insufficient mammary-gland development, spends most of her nights riding the subway, hooks up with a psychotic lowlife who turns out to be a drug dealer, and searches for her little brother whom she's hypnotized into thinking he's a dog and who goes missing by a frozen river when she's supposed to be watching out for him. To help mitigate her misery, Tracey also dreams of having a relationship with a brooding "emo" bad boy at school and fantasizes that she is a famous, universally worshipped rock star. But it is not Tracey's story that is of primary interest here; rather it's the cut-and-paste film-making style director Bruce McDonald has employed to create a sense of fragmentation and dislocation in the viewer - intended, obviously, to mirror the highly chaotic and disordered nature of Tracey's world and life. With rare exceptions, the screen is occupied by as few as two and as many as a dozen shots at a time, often portraying the same sequence from slightly different angles or at slightly different moments in time, or portraying thematically related scenes simultaneously. The question inevitably arises, is the approach effective in what it's trying to accomplish or does it serve as a distancing device for those of us who are trying to enter into Tracey's mind and world. I imagine that different viewers will come to varying verdicts on that point. Personally, I appreciate what McDonald is trying to do here more than I admire it. "The Tracey Fragments," which Maureen Medved has adapted from her own novel, offers many probing insights into the subject of teenage angst, particularly as regards the tremendous pressure modern young people are put under to "measure up" and conform to some arbitrarily agreed-upon social standard. And "Juno"'s Ellen Page gives a stunning performance as the young woman caught in an ever-tightening web of self-hatred (this is, in many ways, the darker side of "Juno," and Page is much less mannered in this role). But, frankly, the movie probably would have been more moving and involving without all the migraine-inducing imagery which succeeds mainly in throwing us out of the story. In fact, there is only one scene in which the split screen technique actually serves a narrative purpose - and that is when Tracey is hiding behind a curtain while her drug-dealer friend is being savagely beaten by the irate boss to whom he owes money. Most of the rest of the time, the approach feels more like a gimmick designed to separate this film from the rest of the "distressed-teen indie" pack than an artistically viable choice in its own right. Still, if you can get past all the artiness and visual distraction, you might just find in "The Tracey Fragments" a thoughtful, sensitive and ineffably sad glimpse into a young woman's heart.

"The Tracey Fragments" was an incredible story of female adolescent struggle in today's age of unloving parents, over-sexualized high schoolers, and quack psychiatrists. This story was told through a very interesting and creative narrative and visual style. It's got that post-modern, out-of-order storytelling technique -- a la Quentin Tarantino or Charlie Kaufman -- that I love. And yet, with it's fragmented, multi-framed editing style, it dared to go deeper into this technique than either of those writers have ever done, allowing two different stories to occur simultaneously by juxtaposing scenes from different points in time and different settings. this style also allowed the director to use different takes of the same action simultaneously, repeat shots, show events happening from completely different angles, focus on multiple things and characters at the same time, highlight small details, allow the scene to play out at different speeds, and sometimes just completely disorient the audience. Each technique had its own unique effect, and was never, ever overused or clichéd. On top of this was an excellent performance by Ellen Page, her best so far in her career. She's been perfect in the roles I've seen her do -- "Hard Candy" and "Juno" -- but I knew she was capable of much more. "Hard Candy" was a little unbelievable and "Juno" was not much more than entertaining. But Tracey, I think, is the kind of role I've been waiting to see from her, and she did it better than I think any actress could have done. This was a full character, realistically written with a whole array of emotions, and she did an outstanding job with it. I'm really disappointed to see so many viewers who just couldn't appreciate it due to the visual technique. I think many were just bothered by the fact that there was so much to see, and they didn't know what to pay attention to. No, you couldn't pay attention to all of it at once, but that's the point. I like art that isn't spoon-fed to me, that I can come back to and notice something different every time, and this is that kind of movie. Most films make it too clear what you're supposed to pay attention to, but this one gave you the power to choose. Sometimes I appreciated the entire composition, sometimes I just focused on one little detail, but isn't that what you're supposed to do with any film? In that sense, appreciating this work of art really isn't that different than any other. I would recommend this film to anyone with an open mind and an interest in the avant-garde or experimental.

... so I will say it some more. The Tracey Fragments is well acted in that there is very little acting and a lot of re-acting. Ellen Page is her remarkable self... I am so hopeful about her continuing career. Fragment is however everything everyone has said about it. It is hard to follow, but it can be followed, it is a simple story but it holds the attention, it is art, it is pretty, it is crap and it poorly done but I watched it from start to finish... knowing where it was going the whole time... why... well because it is chocked full of humans and human interactions. Beautiful humans and harsh humans. People exchanging hardships and moments of simple pleasure. I can... and often do go on and on... So I would recommend this Film to my friends who like to watch movies for more than a story.

The Tracey Fragments is uneventful, anti-climactic and unrelentingly bleak, which in this case amounts to incredibly dull. The split screen effect is a distraction at first, and though eventually your eyes do adjust, the effect is not detrimental or supplemental to the telling of this story. The filmmaker doesn't show simultaneous action, just nonsynchronous bits of each shot. I would argue its artistic merit if only I hadn't seen this done in a dozen other "experimental" films. Though Ellen Page plays a snarky, disaffected teen very well, she had better break from that role soon, or she'll be out of work before she can say aboot.

I love Ellen Page, but I am not so sure that I love what Bruce McDonald has done with her here. It is a story about being a 15-year-old teenager named Tracey Berkowitz (Page): conflicting emotions and perceptions, a volatile compound of anger, vulnerability, curiosity, recklessness and fear. It is shot in a manner that may be unviewable for some: non-linear, fragmented scenes, and some really loud music. Dysfunctional families, weird shrinks, mean-girls at school; it is really not so much about what is happening, but about Tracey's perception of events. If you cant stand the ride, it is worth it. I mean, watching seven or eight fragments at a time is wild! And, of course, Page is terrific.

source: The Tracey Fragments

Is there a better center for exploring simultaneous hallucinations than a "late blooming," possibly bipolar 15 year old girl, with creepy parents? It becomes easy to run into a point of view that has confusing, shifting vision. The trick is to show enough of a world that makes sense that we can see what doesn't. You need the horizon to know when you tilt. This is hard because you have to fold the two views into one eye, seeing the girl and seeing as the girl. Some of this has to make sense spatiotemporally and some has to goof with that same sense using it against itself. Along comes the device of multiple images on a screen. This dramatically increases the difficulty of shaping the cinematic effects, offering us challenging new dimensions. I liked this. I think it worked. Because it works and is new — and I mean pretty much wholly new discounting Greenaway. "Time Code" and "Hotel" played with these sorts of notions experimentally. This is placed between them, and with serious intentions to hurt. Hurt it does, and that's the first milestone for something that could matter. Ellen Page is more here of what she gained fame for in "Juno." She's fantastic. It makes Hilary Swank in "Boys Don't Cry" seem pretty tame. Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.