Even with the film's scant running time of 77 minutes, the unrelenting use of Mondrian splitscreen is bound to give anyone a headache.
Comment
07/24/09
The Tracey Fragments (2008)
38
%
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:32
Fresh:12
Rotten:20
Average Rating:4.9/10
Consensus: Splitscreen intensive and at times ambiguous, this Ellen Page vehicle cum psychodrama takes audacious risks that may confuse.
Runtime: 77 mins
Genre: Dramas
Synopsis: Ellen Page (JUNO) stars in this dark comedy about a teen who goes in search of her lost younger brother. From Maureen Medved's script based on her own novel, THE TRACEY FRAGMENTS features music... [More]
Starring: Ellen Page, Ari Cohen, Max McCabe-Lokos, Erin McMurtry
Director: Bruce McDonald
Reviews for The Tracey Fragments
An exploration of the heightened, extreme emotional sensations of adolescence, The Tracey Fragments is demanding and relentless, an image overload in search of resolution.
10/04/08
To criticize a film called The Tracey Fragments for being too fragmented may sound a bit on-the-nose, but this experimental drama from Canadian director Bruce McDonald is interesting for a while and then goes to pieces.
06/13/08
The split screen has never been used so purposefully or with such aesthetic care, capturing the multiple perspectives of a character who cannot separate reality from illusion because the whole world is inside her head.
06/13/08
I hated this movie. I really did.
05/19/08
All this proves is that watching a poorly executed scene from 19 perspectives is worse than watching it once in an unbroken frame.
05/14/08
This audacious puzzlement is worth seeing, I guess, for some startling and innovative visual designs. But it doesn’t amount to anything more substantial than a technical tour de force.
05/14/08
[Page is] virtually the sole reason to see this duller-than-it-sounds experiment.
05/13/08
Viewed as the sum of its sad incidents, The Tracey Fragments seems like the kind of adolescent melodrama that has become a staple of young-adult literature.
05/09/08
Top CriticBut Tracey Berkowitz is the anti-Juno: Where Cody Diablo's heroine is insouciant and confidently nonchalant, Tracey is angry, insecure and filled with an unsettling self-loathing, which Page brings to life with a searing immediacy.
05/09/08
I have a feeling that this is the last time we'll see a down-and-dirty Ellen Page.
05/09/08
The Tracey Fragments is a grating stunt that plays like a film-school project, cutting a bland story into a million tiny irritating pieces.
05/09/08
This angsty Canadian movie directed by Bruce McDonald takes its title all too literally: Every sequence is splintered into multiple split screens, which means that you can follow the dreary, semi-incomprehensible action from many viewpoints at once.
05/09/08
Even the adorable Ellen Page is entitled to perform in a dud.
05/09/08
Will be remembered as a shard in Page’s filmography.
05/09/08
Arty to the nth degree, splintered and, yes, fragmented
05/08/08
The cinematic equivalent of a hyper-pretentious, solo performance piece whose style grows tiresome before you've even finished reading the playbill.
05/08/08
Director Bruce McDonald splits his screen eight ways to Sunday in The Tracey Fragments, a splintered form ostensibly intended to match the psyche of his protagonist.
05/08/08
Unlike the frustrating gimmickry of Mike Figgis's Timecode and Hotel, McDonald's bedazzling multi-frame experiment poeticizes and enhances an otherwise slender story (forgivable at only 77 minutes long)...
05/07/08
Director Bruce McDonald deserves high praise for the chance he takes, here, departing from convention by experimenting with split screens for the duration of the claustrophobic psychodrama.
05/07/08
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