Tagline: Something’s missing.
15-year-old Tracey Berkowitz (Ellen Page) is naked under a tattered shower curtain at the back of a bus, looking for her little brother Sonny (Zie Souwand), who thinks he’s a dog. Tracey’s journey leads us into the dark underbelly of the city, into the emotional cesspool of her home, through the brutality of her high school, the clinical cat-and-mouse games with her shrink and her soaring fantasies of Billy Zero (Slim Twig) – her rock and roll savior. Her travels also put her in contact with the seedier inhabitants of the city, like Lance (Maxwell McCabe-Lokos), her would-be savior who ultimately puts her life in jeopardy. Tracey’s stories begin to intertwine truth with lies, and hope with despair as we move closer to the truth of Sonny’s disappearance.
The Tracey Fragments is a 2007 drama film directed by Canadian Bruce McDonald and written by Maureen Medved, based on her novel of the same name. It stars Ellen Page in the title role and Zie Souwand, Libby Adams, Shawn Ahmed, Stephen Amell, Jackie Brown, Ari Cohen, Ryan Cooley, Jeffrey Bornstein, Kate Todd, Julian Richings in supporting cast. The film is produced by Sarah Timmins and executive produced by Paul Barkin.
The film was selected to open the Panorama section of the 57th Berlin International Film Festival and had its world premiere February 8, 2007. It is being distributed in Canada by Odeon Films, with world sales being handled by Bavaria Films International. The film had its North American premiere at the 2007 Toronto International Film Festival on September 12. Canadian theatrical release followed in October 2007. The film was acquired for the United States by THINKFilm, and was released May 9, 2008.[1] After a screening at the Possible Worlds 2007 Canadian Film Festival the film was acquired for DVD release in Australia and New Zealand by Siren Visual. The film was a low budget production, being made on only CAD$750,000.
Film Review for The Tracey Fragments
Average Teenage Girl, Assembling a Life Without a Set of Instructions
“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. 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). Tracey (Ellen Page) is a squall of conflicting emotions and perceptions, a volatile compound of anger, vulnerability, curiosity, recklessness and fear.
In this she may indeed be typical, and the story Mr. McDonald’s movie tells may also be somewhat familiar. 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. Tracey’s home life is a near-caricature of middle-class dysfunction. 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. The shrink (Julian Richings, dressed as a woman) is not much help.
At 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. The drab city into which Tracey descends in search of Sonny is a purgatory of monsters, losers and freaks. 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.
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. Instead it is fierce, enigmatic and affecting. Some of this has to do with 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. While the full range of trauma that befalls Tracey does not seem entirely plausible, Ms. Page is never less than convincing.
And in any case the movie is less about what happens to her than it is the record of her perceptions. Mr. 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. 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.
When split-screen techniques are used in films like the original version of “The Thomas Crown Affair,” “Timecode” and “Conversations With Other Women,” it is usually so that the audience can see the same action, simultaneously, from different angles. Mr. McDonald does some of this, but more often he shatters and scatters images to amplify their expressive power, and to induce a state of sensory and cognitive overload analogous to Tracey’s troubled consciousness. The 77 minutes of “The Tracey Fragments” are not always easy to endure or to believe, but their cumulative effect is also hard to shake.
Continue Reading and View the Theatrical Trailer
The Tracey Fragments (2008)
Directed by: Bruce McDonald
Starring: Ellen Page, Zie Souwand, Libby Adams, Shawn Ahmed, Stephen Amell, Jackie Brown, Ari Cohen, Ryan Cooley, Jeffrey Bornstein, Kate Todd, Julian Richings
Screenplay by: Maureen Medved
Production Design by: Ingrid Jurek
Cinematography by: Steve Cosens
Film Editing by: Jeremiah Munce, Gareth C. Scales
Costume Design by: Lea Carlson
Set Decoration by: Friday Myers
Art Direction by: Pierre Bonhomme
Music by: Broken Social Scene
MPAA Rating: R for strong language throughout, some sexual content and violence.
Distributed by: THINKFilm
Release Date: May 2, 2008
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