The Tracey Fragments

The latest film by Canadian director Bruce McDonald, The Tracey Fragments is the schizophrenic story of fifteen-year old reject, Tracey Berkowitz (Ellen Page) and her broken home. Essentially the film is set in Winnipeg while Tracey looks for her missing brother (who thinks he’s a dog), but it would be impossible to reduce the film to such simple terms. McDonald employs a (more or less) non-linear progression of events, along with a heavy and consistent use of splitscreening to reflect Tracey’s scattered sense of being. The music scored by Canada’s supergroup, Broken Social Scene, likewise lends to Tracey’s sense of aimlessness and in combination the two create a mise-en-scene of breaking and being broken. Aside from the split-screens, McDonald employs other avante-garde techniques, like the actor's direct address of the audience and the insertion of the opening credits a quarter-way through the film. However, like the other films that I’ve seen by McDonald (Roadkill, Hard Core Logo) the pacing is rushed (the film was only an hour and fifteen minutes!) leaving the film feeling half-baked—not even Page’s performance could save the sometimes unnatural dialogue. Nonetheless, the film is convincingly disturbing and you can’t help but sympathize with the character; and despite its shortscomings, seems promising of Canadian cinema.
Then again, how many times have Canadian critics said that about Cronenberg/Egoyan/McKellar?

Bad - frankly, not everyone is as forgiving as me.

Starring Ellen Page
Written by Maureen Medved
Directed by Bruce McDonald