“Tracey Berkowitz (Best Actress Oscar-nominee Ellen Page) is riding around a pre-blizzard urban wasteland on the back of a city bus, naked except for the tattered curtain she’s wrapped in, looking for her missing little brother (whom she fears she has hypnotized). Smart and acerbic, but still only a tender 15 years old, over the course of the film Tracey reveals to the audience (and herself) the truth about how she wound up there. In the process, she begins to work through the mystery of her brother’s disappearance, which is not all it is first laid out to be.Based on screenwriter Maureen Medved’s novel of the same name, maverick Canadian filmmaker Bruce McDonald employs a dazzling non-linear split-screen style to represent Tracey’s shattering anger, and sets the results to a swirling score from Broken Social Scene.The result is a film truly unlike any other- intense, kinetic, and dark, yet breathtakingly beautiful. On screen for nearly every frame of the film, Ellen Page delivers a tour-de-force performance that cements her status as one of the most exciting actresses in film today.”
- “The Tracey Fragments” press kit – FINAL - THINKFilm
The Tracey Fragments is a Canadian film that might be a little too dark for some, but in an artful way, it experiments with several advanced uses of editing that only a few films have ever used. You might ask, “Why write The Tracey Fragments?”. Well, we have an answer for you! Here is a snippet from writer Maureen Medved in “TURNING IT ON: ABOUT THE PRODUCTION (AS TOLD BY DIRECTOR BRUCE McDONALD, PRODUCER SARAH TIMMINS, AND WRITER MAUREEN MEDVED)”:
“The Tracey Fragments began as a series of dramatic monologues I wrote in the late eighties. I was living in Montreal at the time and was very influenced by modern dance, which was very experimental and took tremendous risks. I wondered if I could do the same thing with writing, and started working on the pieces at night. Soon after, I got stranded in my home town, Winnipeg, for a few years with a serious illness. As I was in a life or death situation, I threw myself into my writing and what I’d started in Montreal became The Tracey Fragments.
At that time, Tracey reflected how I experienced the world. The fragments were a melding of dramatic monologue and magical realist fiction, a picaresque series of tales about a young woman who got into terrific jams. She got into the kind of trouble many women experience – trouble with men – both strange and familiar, bizarre miscommunications, power dynamics, that sort of thing.
In the early 90’s, I performed the fragments as Tracey at punk shows in Vancouver before the bands came on. Eventually I studied dramatic writing at The University of British Columbia and got a lot of encouragement there from all my instructors. I got to work on Tracey, and soon I had The Tracey Fragments that became the novel.”
I was also able to find a short video of an interview of Ellen Page at last year’s Karlovy Vary International Film Festival.
The Tracey Fragments will opening in New York City’s Village East Cinema on May 9, 2008 followed by other theatres in North America.
For more information on the film and where it will be playing, you can visit the movie’s website, www.thetraceyfragments.com.
Nova Scotian Connection: Actress Ellen Page from Halifax, NS
2 Comments, Comment or Ping
jamesd
I saw it this week. I was going to use it on my site, but it wasn’t worth it in my opinion. The story was just too meh for me. What was the point?
The editing is very original, artsy, but it is irritating at times. But the biggest problem was the story for me. Like, a lot of things were weird for no reason. It wasn’t funny and it didn’t make it more interesting. But most of all, the story overall just wasn’t that interesting. It might win a prize for editing, but that’s about it I think.
Apr 13th, 2008
admin
I know it’s been shown at various festivals around the world but I still haven’t seen it yet. Hopefully I’ll be able to see it in California while I’m there.
Apr 13th, 2008
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