Before her "Juno" fame Ellen Page was willing to take all kinds of chances as she followed the career path of Thora Birch from mainstream family entertainment to more cutting edge stuff. "The Tracey Fragments" (2007) was her last film before "Juno" and was like appearing in somebody's limited budget student film. Imagine your basic ahead of the curve student writing a somewhat "bent" screenplay, an inexperienced director turning Page loose to interpret her character without the help of acting for the camera direction, and the entire film class piling into the computer lab to slice and dice the thing in post-production hoping that thousands of hours of digital editing can add some value to the minimalist production.
If the idea sounds like fun it probably was; and the end product should please its narrow target audience of film buffs, Page fans, and assorted off-kilter types. "The Tracey Fragments" is a blend of "Ghost World" (2001) and "Gummo" (1997), imagine a dumbed-down Enid (Birch) transplanted to Xenia, Ohio.
This coming-of-age story is self-indulgent; with a screenplay chock full of symbolism, a chopped up time-line, and frame-in-frame effects (can you say "fragments") that call attention to themselves. But in this case it is not a bad thing; if you don't find the whole package entertaining you can just focus on the inventive style and on what it tells you about film theory and how viewers expect to read a film.
Tracey Berkowitz (the slack-jawed title character) has a secret. She seems to have misplaced her little brother Sonny and the film elliptically reveals the story of Sonny's disappearance and Tracey miserable existence; with the disparate story fragments connected by Tracey's odyssey around town in a bus. But film conventions are not followed and it is impossible to tell which segments are real and which ones are figments of Tracey's imagination. Ultimately the viewer is left to wonder if there ever was a Sonny; that he may simply represent Tracey's loss-of-innocence in what may otherwise be a very traditional coming-of-age tale. By the end we see that her coping mechanism seems to have worked and they go out on a character who probably has come to terms with her reluctant nudge into an adult world; a world that she already finds disappointing but one which will be tolerable because of her low expectations.
Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child. Comment
If the idea sounds like fun it probably was; and the end product should please its narrow target audience of film buffs, Page fans, and assorted off-kilter types. "The Tracey Fragments" is a blend of "Ghost World" (2001) and "Gummo" (1997), imagine a dumbed-down Enid (Birch) transplanted to Xenia, Ohio.
This coming-of-age story is self-indulgent; with a screenplay chock full of symbolism, a chopped up time-line, and frame-in-frame effects (can you say "fragments") that call attention to themselves. But in this case it is not a bad thing; if you don't find the whole package entertaining you can just focus on the inventive style and on what it tells you about film theory and how viewers expect to read a film.
Tracey Berkowitz (the slack-jawed title character) has a secret. She seems to have misplaced her little brother Sonny and the film elliptically reveals the story of Sonny's disappearance and Tracey miserable existence; with the disparate story fragments connected by Tracey's odyssey around town in a bus. But film conventions are not followed and it is impossible to tell which segments are real and which ones are figments of Tracey's imagination. Ultimately the viewer is left to wonder if there ever was a Sonny; that he may simply represent Tracey's loss-of-innocence in what may otherwise be a very traditional coming-of-age tale. By the end we see that her coping mechanism seems to have worked and they go out on a character who probably has come to terms with her reluctant nudge into an adult world; a world that she already finds disappointing but one which will be tolerable because of her low expectations.
Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child. Comment