The Tracey Fragments

By Jenny Siddle
November 02, 2007

After watching the entertaining demise of Joe Dick and the boys in the 1996 mockumentary Hard Core Logo, I decided from then on that any Bruce McDonald flick is definitely worth my time. Who knew it was going to take him over a decade to direct another feature film? (Okay, he did make, Picture Clair, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say I've never even met anyone who has seen it. But if you have, drop me a line and tell me how it was.) After spending most of the millennium working on TV movies and freelance episodes for shows like Degrassi: The Next Generation, the much anticipated debut of his new feature film, The Tracey Fragments, has finally arrived. And let me tell you, it was worth the wait.

Tracey Berkowitz (Ellen Page) is a normal 15-year-old girl in Winnipeg who hates herself. After being grounded by her mentally abusive parents, Tracey sneaks out of the house to find some space despite warnings of an imminent blizzard. Her brother, Sonny, who never speaks and whom Tracey has trained to act like a dog, insists on following her. When Tracey spots the one and only love of her life, Billy Zero, parked on the side of the road, she is so wrapped up in their non-mutual love affair that she loses all concept of time and space... and unfortunately also loses Sonny. The entire film centers around Tracey riding a public bus, searching for her lost brother, while allowing us to tag along for little side trips inside her manic teenage brain during the worst three days of her life.

Let me start by saying that this film is definitely not for everyone. Not only is the movie presented completely non-chronologically, but it is edited in such a way that we never see a singular image on the full screen at any point in the film. Instead, we literally watch fragments of Tracey's thoughts, multiple small picture boxes of random narrative, all at once. At times these small picture boxes show juxtaposing images, at other times, they are on delay, ensuring that we watch and hear the same clip repeated three times from different camera angles. It's pretty wild. While we are generally confused throughout the entire film as to what sequence of events occurred in which order during Tracey's tailspin, the presentation of the facts is so mesmerizing that we don't really care. I actually caught myself smiling just at the spectacle of it all.

I expect that the experimental nature of the film will be too much for some viewers to deal with. After the first ten minutes I admit that I was concerned I wouldn't be able to handle a full 80 minutes of such dizzying footage, but they made it work. It worked because the film is about stream of consciousness. It is about being a confused teenager. If the content of the film were any different, the editing choices might seem merely original, but with no merit. The editing team of Matthew Hannam, Jeremy Munce, and Gareth C. Scales definitely deserve a big hand, considering they worked on the film for nine months in the editing room compared to the mere 14 days it took for McDonald to shoot the footage. Even the soundtrack deserves special mention, as the edgy, indie-pop music by Toronto's own Broken Social Scene illuminates the distorted imagery of Tracey's teenage frustration.

You should also see this film for the performance of leading lady Ellen Page. At the spry age of 20, Page has already built a solid acting resume, including roles in X-Men: The Last Stand and Hard Candy. It is so refreshing to see a non-stereotypical teenage girl up on screen because, having once been a teenage girl, I know that there is in fact nothing stereotypical about it.

For the most part, the audience sees the world through her eyes, which is both disturbing and entertaining. For example, we witness random clips of Tracey talking to her female psychologist, Dr. Heker, exactly the way Tracey perceives her - as Julian Richlings in drag (you may remember him as Bucky Haight in Hard Core Logo). Hilarious. Yet the lines between what is merely Tracey's perception and what is reality definitely blur as the audience tries to make sense of the plot. Even Bruce McDonald himself admits that he is really unsure what is fact and what is fiction.

So kudos to Bruce McDonald and novelist/screenwriter Maureen Medved - not only for daring to be different, but for succeeding at what so many Canadian filmmakers fail.

(Note: although the film is meant to be set in Winnipeg, it was actually shot in Hamilton due to budgetary concerns. It turns out the seedy parts of Winnipeg and Hamilton look strikingly similar.)

Running Time: 1 hour, 20 minutes
Certification: Canada: 14A
Director: Bruce McDonald
Producer: Sarah Timmins
Executive Producers: Paul Barkin and Phyllis Laing
Screenplay: Maureen Medved
Director of Photography: Steve Cosens
Editors: Matthew Hannam, Jeremy Munce, and Gareth C. Scales
Music: Broken Social Scene