An exploration of the heightened, extreme emotional sensations of adolescence, The Tracey Fragments is demanding and relentless, an image overload in search of resolution.
Comment
10/04/08
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.
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
Top CriticEven with the film's scant running time of 77 minutes, the unrelenting use of Mondrian splitscreen is bound to give anyone a headache.
07/24/09
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
Top CriticAll 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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