The Tracey Fragments

... 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.

This is my first review ever on IMDb - and iv been here since it started. But after seeing this film yesterday i just had to leave my comments.

This movie isn't for everyone. A lot of people will actually hate it - dismiss it to the garbage cage in a heartbeat...but for those who truly enjoy the art of movies, this is a gold piece.

At first i didn't think this movies was going to be anything else then just another "split screen" movie... but as we soon realize, this is so much more, and its brilliant executed. As the main character (excellent performance from Ellen page there) gets more and more emotions, they are presented to us in a way of past, present, future and fantasy - all in different small squares on the screens. It made at least me really feel all her struggling with being a teenager who hasn't found her place yet.

Thumbs up for this - it should be a must see, in ever movie class there are - for its visual.

I saw this movie at the Berlin Film Festival and did not know nothing about it before. There will be people that will call this a "masterpiece" or "pure art", and there will be a lot more people that will call this "bullshit". I wouldn't argue with neither of them. If you want to enjoy this movie, you will have to buy every idea the director came up with, otherwise you will want to leave the cinema. At every moment of the movie, the picture is split up into lots of little pictures, often showing the same scene from different camera angles. This can be exhausting at times, but it can also be very exciting.

You suddenly realize that you as a member of the audience are part of the film-making process. You are the one to edit to movie, to decide whether you want the see the long or the close shot. I found this a very interesting approach to the process of making a movie. But still, sometimes the film seems to be so random, trying hard to be special and smart. You might have to watch it a second time to really check if there's is a kind of inner logic to every scene. The movie has great moments and is full of original ideas, though sometimes it is only original for the purpose of being original and nothing else. Apart from the interesting picture language, I have to mention the gorgeous Ellen Page, who is - ultimately - THE most talented young actress there is today. I'm looking forward to her future projects.

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.

I just saw the world premiere of this film at the Berlin Film Festival and I was quite surprised. When I got the tickets I had no idea what it was actually about. When I was told it was about a 15-year old girl dealing with puberty I wasn't very happy about it. But then what I saw surprised me. During the first 2 minutes I prepared myself for two hours of overdone artistic cinema. But after some time, I got into it and even got attached to the girl who everybody just calls "Its". However, according to the director, this film may have been shot in only 14 days but, it took them about nine months to edit it. No wonder, since the director Bruce McDonald took the "Fragment"-part of the title by word. The film consists of hundreds of fragments of pictures, each showing different perspectives of the same moment mixing up reality and thoughts and fantasies of Tracy, the 15-year old protagonist. There are only rare scenes in which there are less then 3 fragments to be seen on screen. And the more emotional the protagonist gets, the more fragments appear. So, thus confusing you with just too much information it leaves you overwhelmed with impressions and emotions that are just too plenteous to handle. Off course, McDonald did this on purpose. It's all just a try to visualize what a teen must have to go through in puberty. After a while you get sucked into a world of bullies, disturbed parents, unanswered love, doubts and fantasies, sympathizing more and more with Tracy. Even though it was exhausting to pay attention all the time, I'd say the film is worth seeing (if you have the stamina). I have seen a lot of movies but this one was actually something new. Well, it may be exhausting but when you think of it, wasn't puberty too?!