Paging Ellen!
Nick Haramis
May 07, 2008
The Tracey Fragments has a number of things working against it. There's that splintered-screen, Mike Figgis-meets-Jack Bauer aesthetic that seems to have audiences seeing double. There are those intimations of Dogme 95 that have Ellen Page's character chasing after her brother who barks, convinced he's a dog. And, maybe most dangerous of all, there's the ominous reality that, along with Smart People, this is Page's return to the bigscreen after her Oscar-nominated turn in Juno. There are curses associated with that sort of thing.
Thankfully, famed Canadian director Bruce McDonald has crafted, from Maureen Medved’s book of the same name, a razor-sharp and visceral exploration of teenage life. It’s at once intelligent and frightening. Tracey navigates her bleak, rural existence as she comes to terms with her sexual awakening, her missing brother, and a violent encounter that changes everything. Tracey, like Juno, has sex. She’s smart and world-weary. Even off camera, there are similarities between that Ellen Page and this Ellen Page.
Whereas Page bonded with Juno director Jason Reitman over their mutual love for Kimya Dawson, McDonald says, “I cast her because she liked Patti Smith.”
As for the split-screen that’s garnering more mixed reviews than a Björk movie, McDonald, while at the Diesel Box Office screening of the film, explains, “We didn’t have any money to make this film. It was a bleak story, and I was trying to find something to give it that razzle-dazzle. The title gave me a clue, obviously. And I figured it might help separate this film from the pack at festivals like Sundance. This is, after all, the portrait of a girl. But it’s a cubist portrait.”
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