The Tracey Fragments (2007)

i must have seen a different film!!

Best movie of this year hands down!

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

The story-telling is good with flashbacks.The film is both funny and heartbreaking. You smile in a scene and get a soulcrushing revelation in the next.

The Tracey Fragments is a journey into the conundrums of human memory. The presentation and structure of the movie make it worthwhile watch for any cinemaphile.The use of multi-frame compositions is excellent, if flawed. The Tracey Fragments is at times uncomfortable to watch, but appropriately so. When Tracey relives the traumatic moments irreversibly etched into her memory, it is only appropriate you experience sympathetic distress. To watch this film you must make an active effort to obtain information by selecting a screen to focus upon, and consequentially you feel more like a participant than a voyeur. Through extremely sparing use of scenes with a traditional single frame, it makes these few scenes stand out like the crescendo of a George Gershwin song. The flaw with this film's extreme use of the medium to affect the audience's emotions is that it is apparent that it is doing so. Although you see the magician's trick, the showmanship is superb.Whereas the film's presentation empowers you to take an active role in partaking the movie visually, the storytelling is too authoritative. The presentation of the plot in disjointed fragments is conceptually excellent, but flawed in execution. Unlike David Lynch's Mulholland Drive, The Tracey Fragments does not blend fanciful fabrications and recollection of fact; the plot fragments are presented as a dichotomy of fruits of Tracey's imagination, and memories of formal events. However, It becomes increasingly evident throughout the movie, that Tracey's actual memories may be as misleading as the figments of her imagination.This film was shot in only 14 days, and it shows in the poor construction of some of the scenes. These shortcomings only make the movie a better analog for the memory of Tracey Berkowitz. The writing seems like a rough draft, but is all the more creepy for it. Ellen Page is excellent, even though she is more pretty than Tracey should be. The scenes with Tracey and Lance (played by Max McCabe-Lokos) are notably good and indicative of a chemistry built from previous work together.The Tracey Fragments is centered around its unique and powerful emotional impact. It is thought-provoking as well, but it is not notable as a purely cerebral thriller. I rate it highly on the merits of its strengths not on its lack of shortcomings. If it seems at all interesting to you, watch it; the worst possible outcome is that you won't like it.

This film is yet another great thanks to Ellen's amazing performance. Throughout the film, you see Tracey fall in love, attempt to rebel, deal with the bullies and completely break down. Exactly what every other teen goes through. But being that I'm the same age as Tracey in the film, I honestly couldn't have delivered the role better even if I were experiencing this first hand! She came off to me as a truly honest and genuine person.It took me until the end but I realized the symbolism of growing up (another great quality about this film, making it so unique.) After she lost her virginity to Slim Twig's character, her little brother disappeared. Her little brother symbolized her innocence or her childhood. And the fact that she made her top priority finding her little brother showed responsibility. Overall I believe that though fragmented screen put my eyes to work, it was appropriate for the scatter-brained, emotionally unstable girl. Both Ellen Page and Slim Twig did a fantastic job and the symbolism made it even better. This is a truly unique film and I'd say it's easily in my personal top 5!

...this was artsy nonsense with a capital fartsy, no two ways about it. Presented in a scattergun multi-frame format, Bruce "Picture Claire" McDonald's "experimental" rendition of novice novelist Maureen Medved's faux "Catcher in the Rye" tale of teen angst and despair (with a screenplay by the selfsame author) utterly fails to engage, primarily due to its highly stylized presentation, and almost completely unlikeable protagonist, a loopy 15-year-old outcast with some serious problems (like losing a little brother who thinks he's a dog) and an attitude that made this viewer wish she would follow him wherever he probably went. Starring Ellen "Hard Candy" Page, who riffs incessantly on the darker edges of her "Juno" persona, "The Tracey Fragments" is far too much of a labor to watch to get anything meaningful out of it. No doubt Ms. Medved was tickled to write her own screen adaptation--more power to her--but if her source material is anything like this film, it must be damned near unreadable, and just as depressingly irritating. I give it five stars strictly for the obvious love and craftsmanship that went into it, and a pretty decent soundtrack. Ms. Page is a fine actress, and I hope she got a good paycheck, but this is not the sort of pretentious twaddle I want to see her doing. Grow up, young lady, and start acting your age. Of slim peripheral interest: "The Tracey Fragments" features at least two kevinbacons to George Romero. I'll leave it to Constant Reader to discover them.

Like Mike Figgis's Timecode which presenting the film four frames simultaneously on screen, sometime you just need to admire a person who did it; regardless what is said and done in the story. For their determination for inventing and experimenting something that count as a film, even you knew that you're not having a good time. The Tracey Fragments is the movie that will embraced by people who really into a film-making process, if not just for any regular moviegoers.In Christopher Nolan's Memento, the film plays with time. It was edited and rearranged backward as if an audience suffered from amnesia like the protagonist. The Tracey Fragments was also heavily edited to represent subconscious of adolescence mind. What's in Tracey's mind is fragmented; reality and fantasy are overlapping with each other simultaneously in each tiny frame presented on screen. It's maybe difficult to catch up from time to time, but it's worthwhile if you're getting the hang of it.And just like Memento, if you watch it in a perfect sequence narrative, it will be just another straightforward drama that has nothing much to add on. And to make it worse, The Tracey Fragments is suffered from serious lack of decent dialogs. What we've heard are only whining or bitching about society from hormone-inducing teenage girl. And it's even more embarrassing when secondary characters like parents or strangers open their mouth.But it maybe filmmaker's intention after all, maybe he want to show us how uncomplicated and simple adolescence are. They may speak what's in the heart without processing through the mind. Their tyrantness, lust, and stupidity that end up causing someone else's life, maybe this is the film that trying to show Tracey (By the way, great vehicle for Ellen Page, she's just perfect for the part) a step to embrace her own reality and feeling guilty for the thing she have done.The running time for this film is only 70 or so minute. It took only 14 days to shoot, but it took 9 months to edit. The Tracey Fragments may not teach you anything, nor give you a good time in return. But for that kind of dedication, you just gotta give it to them.