The Tracey Fragments

[KLAXXON]

How many actresses can you name that handle tough topics and give intense performances? Also how many of those also tackle big budget Hollywood movies? Meryl Streep? Jodie Foster? But how many actresses have handled topics like pedophilia, teen pregnancy, cults and superheroes all before their 20th Birthday?

Ellen page has had quite a career so far, the hard hitting pedophilia thriller Hard Candy put her on the map with them, X-Men The Last Stand showed that she wasn’t all teen-angst’ and Juno proved that she could balance comedy and drama in equal measure. She may still be young, but she is one teen actress that does not want to churn out ‘romance fluff’ 24 hours a day to please the audience, but at the same time she doesn’t turn her back on it; you’ll not find many actresses that will happily play superhero and social comment movies without down playing one or the other to her audience.

Ellen page is not letting up with her latest offering either. The Tracey Fragments in the smallest of nutshells; is about a girl looking for her disabled brother who has run off. But as I say, that’s in the smallest of nutshells. What director Bruce McDonald creates is an audio visual experience that if you are unprepared for will knock your socks off. Using the black screen as a canvas, McDonald flashes images using different camera angles from different points in the scene to emphasize different characters and emotions. Working like a cross between a Mondrian painting and a 60’s credit sequence the scenes unfold in a flurry before your eyes.

On top of that; as if that wasn’t enough to baffle your viewing, McDonald also plays with time; he makes Momento look like a straightforward tale with the scenes bouncing back and forth. What would normally become a mundane story in the hand of another director almost becomes a strange work of art.

Ellen’s performance as the Tracey of the title is as powerful as you would imagine, she manages to handle the intense highs and tranquil lows of the role with an ease that would give other younger actresses or even older ones a cause to worry. Should you fancy something a little different to watch tonight, something that will have you thinking long after the credits have rolled then this is the one for you.

As the film begins, Tracey is naked under a shower curtain and offers this warning “Look, the other day, something happened. I came to certain realizations. I can't tell you what or you'll end up like me, on this bus, looking for someone.”




Cult Canadian director Bruce McDonald's adaptation of Maureen Medved's novel is a bold formalist experiment: After shooting the screenplay -- adapted by Medved herself -- McDonald and editors Jermiah and Gareth C. Scales slice, dice, split and otherwise fragmented the screen into tiny shards and frames within frames in an effort to capture the disintegrating psyche of its heroine: An emotionally distraught Winnipeg high-school student. The experiment works surprisingly well, thanks in large part to its star, Ellen Page.

In a sense, the entire film takes place inside the mind of Tracey Berkowitz (Page), a picked-on, put-upon 15-year-old who, wrapped in a bed sheet a la Norman Bates, narrates her story from one of the Winnipeg buses she aimlessly rides when she can't think of anything better to do. This time, however, Tracey has boarded the bus with a serious purpose in mind: Her beloved, mentally challenged 9-year-old brother, Sonny (Zie Souwand), is missing, and Tracey knows she's largely responsible. As a deadly blizzard gathers force, Tracey frantically searches the city, and through bits and pieces of flashbacks -- some of which share screen-space with the contemporaneous action as well as figments of Tracey's increasingly fevered imagination -- we see Tracey's life, which wasn't terribly rosy even before Sonny disappeared. Her father (Ari Cohen) is an angry, depressive failure whose only apparent power over Tracey is to send her to a psychiatrist (Julian Richings, in drag) while grounding her for months at a time. Her mother (Erin McMurtry) is an indifferent, chain-smoking TV addict who divides her contempt equally between husband and daughter; and Tracey's life at school is a friendless hell on earth. She's ridiculed by both boys and girls for being flat-chested, and the abuse isn't entirely restricted to mere words. The only light in Tracey's life is the pallid glow cast by the new kid in school: a black-clad hipster by the name of Johnny Zero (Slim Twig). But as the fragments of Tracey's story coalesce, we see that her infatuation with Johnny Zero isn't without its own dire consequences.


Even though the screen is often divided into a Mondrian-like grid, each individual box containing its own discreet moving image, McDonald's film is surprisingly fluid and easy to follow: The complex arrangement of frames-within-frames actually allows for more meaning at a given moment, allowing McDonald to operate on a symbolic and literal level at the same time. But Page's potent performance is the narrative glue: Once again playing an edgy, articulate teenager, it may seem as if Page is fast becoming typecast. But 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.




No actress has expressed the harrowing angst of contemporary girlhood with as much depth and honesty as Ellen Page. From the devious avenger of "Hard Candy" to the clueless runaway of "Mouth to Mouth," she attacks her roles with intellectual acuity and emotional truth.

"The Tracey Fragments," experimental in the interior monologues dominating the script and a visual scheme based exclusively on the use of multiple images, might never have found wide release were it not for Page's Oscar nomination for "Juno." The film is, as its title suggests, a fragmented portrait of a young girl's mind as it unravels in the hours before a blizzard while she rides city buses in search of her missing brother. There are scenes with a transgendered psychiatrist, an idealized love interest, and terrifying encounter with a hulky maniac.

It begins with the 15-year-old Tracey's definition of herself as "just another normal girl who hates herself" and circles through its limited calendar of events using repetition to search for the reality behind a worsening madness. 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




Ellen Page ...  Tracey Berkowitz
Maxwell McCabe-Lokos ...  Lance
Ari Cohen ...  Mr. Berkowitz
Erin McMurtry ...  Mrs. Berkowitz
Zie Souwand ...  Sonny Berkowitz
Stephen Amell ...  Detective
Leonard Dunbar ...  Laughing Man
Chris Ratz ...  Donut Shop Cashier
Daniel Fathers ...  Elegant Pimp Daddy
Ryan Cooley ...  David Goldberg
Jeffrey Bornstein ...  The Boy With Curious Hair
Jackie Brown ...  Mrs. Dorchester the Teacher
Kate Todd ...  That Knockout Bitch Debbie Dodge
Slim Twig ...  Billy Zero
Julian Richings ...  Dr. Heker




IMDB





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[jamshidu]

is this torrent a theatre print.. or an original dvd-rip?

[razzell2]

I believe it would say "screener" if it were a "theater print".
If it says dvdrip, thats what it is, right?

Thanks Klaxxon.

(I was surprised to read your notations at the home page, regarding your shutting down the Klaxxon Release Group.
I realize many torrent pages, and p2p sharing communities have come under fire lately...even having some of the owners of these pages finding themselves in court.
I hope your situation is not like that, and "only" an issue of funds.
I have appreciated your work, and efforts these past years, and hope that you can resolve your issues, and continue to provide us with your eclectic mix of shares.)

Thanks again..

Razz