Oscar nominee Ellen Page, whose “Juno” performance put a barrage of one-liners into the vernacular, gives another bravura turn in “The Tracey Fragments.”
Unfortunately, this performance is wrapped in an exasperating package. Working in her native Canada, Page lends her spiky presence to a digital-video multi-split-screen experiment.
As the title suggests, this is a movie about the fragmenting life of a teenager, Tracey, whose unhappy existence includes a missing little brother and unhappy, sarcastic parents.
Director Bruce McDonald, a renegade whose films “Highway 61” and “Hard Core Logo” have a crazy zing, has taken this theme a little literally. Virtually every moment of the film is presented in different panels on the screen, so that Tracey’s life comes to us in pieces.
Not only are we watching multiple angles on the action at once, but the film also unfolds in a non-linear way. Tracey narrates, after a fashion, although these are mostly statements of self-definition (“No one can stop me. No one can make me stand still”) rather than helpful plot hints.
Tracey’s life at home is unpleasant, and at school she’s ridiculed for her flat chest and sullen manner. Her crush on a cool-acting new kid (Slim Twig) is related to the disappearance of her brother, although we won’t find out how until later.
Ellen Page gets an exhausting workout as Tracey, yet despite the movie’s full-throttle approach, she’s a good enough actress to suggest the lonely kid inside this ball of anger.
A score by Broken Social Scene is similarly complex, but the rest of the movie is a chore to watch. Even at 77 minutes, the busy frames-within-frames suggest attention deficit disorder, rather than a new way of seeing. Perhaps this accurately reflects Tracey’s psyche, but it makes a good argument for detachment and objectivity.
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