Rated ‘R’ Independent flick starring Ellen Page from Hard Candy and Juno. She’s pretty much type cast or the girl has no range. No clue but regardless her performances are always raw and gritty. I like that.
The Tracey Fragments is shown in fragmented graphics for the most part which does get distracting and takes away from the story. The story however it a Memento-ish piece that tells the tale from to beginning… in fragments and jumps around the place here and there, only you don’t really get lost.
Tracey starts off blending her fantasy with reality as she gets home to tell her dysfunctional parents that she lost her little brother, her brother that she hypnotized into thinking he’s a dog). Ridden with so much guilt and pain, she rides the buses and roams around the city searching for him.
You get drawn into her awkward, tortured school life and home life that casts a shadow on how she got to where she’s at and why inside her mind it’s not so fun. This is definitely a journey into the crazy.
I guess what I saw is that her world was all she had all how she was able to decipher her surroundings. It’s difficult to be ‘normal’ or know what that word means when you’ve no real examples of it. What made her different? What could she change if she wanted to and how? So many questions thrown out at her and absolutely no way to get an answer. So she puts up with the bullying, humiliations, hard knocks of life that are thrown at her before and after she begins her search for her little brother who you can only guess his fate.
Her mind takes her reality and churns it into something she could possibly stomach or live with, mainly her poor decisions and the ramifications of those choices.
If I were to grade this film I’d give it a C+ <- wow, well looky there, I *did* grade it.
Tags: Bruce McDonald, Ellen Page, Maureen Medved, The Tracey Fragments
