Saturday, September 15, 2007

Review: The Tracey Fragments

The festival programmer who introduced the director of this film, Bruce McDonald, called the film "innovative". I quote Dictionary.reference.com: "being or producing something like nothing done or experienced or created before." I've seen split-screen movies before, as far back as 2000's Timecode, and I'm betting it wasn't the first. But I can't hold that against the director or the film.

It stars Ellen Page, who I once saw in the Canadian flick Wilby Wonderful, and she'd just finished filming her scenes in the upcoming X-Men: The Last Stand before filming The Tracey Fragments. She plays Tracey, a 15-year old girl in Winnepeg, who lives in a somewhat challenging home environment. When her little brother Sonny goes missing, she runs away from home in a desperate attempt to find him. The film shows, in different frames on the screen, various thoughts in Tracey's mind at any given moment. The film is further fragmented through its chronological jumping about.

Page is a good actress and at about 20 years of age, plays a pretty good 15-year old, though the script helps her out by supplying plenty of naiveté. You get the feeling throughout the film that some moments are poor and/or creative memory on her part, but the truth of her situation comes through in the end. The editing method will cause some frustration for some, though McDonald uses it to create the feeling he was going for. Nonetheless, I think I'm probably done with this style of film. My imdb rating: 6/10.

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