Nearly every shot dissolves, multiplies and recurs, so that the screen becomes a space of contending interpretations, rather than the objective mirror of a single reality. McDonald, assisted by some impressively inventive editors, scrambles chronology, splinters the screen and layers the sound design to turn “The Tracey Fragments” into the elusive, anguished record of an inner world.
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Page is never less than convincing.Īnd in any case the movie is less about what happens to her than it is the record of her perceptions.
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While the full range of trauma that befalls Tracey does not seem entirely plausible, Ms. Page, who seems to be everywhere these days in the wake of “Juno” (which was filmed after “The Tracey Fragments”) and who brilliantly embodies precocious intelligence under various forms of duress. Instead it is fierce, enigmatic and affecting. In the hands of a more literal-minded filmmaker “The Tracey Fragments” might well have been dreary and unbearable, a chronicle of florid self-pity justified by arbitrary cruelty. It is hard to say, glimpsing Tracey wrapped in a filthy curtain, muttering to herself at the back of a bus, whether she has joined their ranks or fallen victim to their depredations. The drab city into which Tracey descends in search of Sonny is a purgatory of monsters, losers and freaks. The shrink (Julian Richings, dressed as a woman) is not much help.Īt school things are worse, as the usual mean-girl humiliations sink to Sadean depths of abasement, and Tracey’s crush on a dreamy new boy reaches a pitch of longing matched in the songs (by Broken Social Scene and others) that adorn the soundtrack. Dad (Ari Cohen) rages and drinks Mom (Erin McMurtry) broods and chain-smokes Tracey’s little brother, Sonny (Zie Souwand), barks like a dog and then disappears. Tracey’s home life is a near-caricature of middle-class dysfunction. Viewed as the sum of its sad, sometimes horrific incidents, “The Tracey Fragments” seems like the kind of adolescent melodrama, at once prurient and cautionary, that has become a staple of young-adult literature. McDonald’s movie tells may also be somewhat familiar. In this she may indeed be typical, and the story Mr. Tracey (Ellen Page) is a squall of conflicting emotions and perceptions, a volatile compound of anger, vulnerability, curiosity, recklessness and fear.
And this confusion is part of the point of this short, powerful feature, directed by Bruce McDonald from a script by Maureen Medved (based on her novel). “I’m not who you think I am,” says Tracey Berkowitz, the 15-year-old protagonist of “The Tracey Fragments.” Since she has also described herself, with evident irony, as a typical teenage girl, it is not always clear what she thinks of herself.
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