In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

The plot of 'The Tracey Fragments' involves a girl named Tracey Burkowitz running away from home in search of her younger brother, who appears to be lost. The story is told in non-chronological order while separate segments eluding to the scenes of the film appear on screen to give the viewer a somewhat disjointed and fragmented narrative in order to allow us to better understand the mind of Tracey. Try to imagine Todd Solondz's 'Welcome to the Dollhouse' crossed with the look of a Lars Von Trier film with a script similar to the style of Harmony Korine's 'julien donkey-boy' and edited like a Peter Greenaway film made in the 90s and onward. I'd say 'The Tracey Fragments' is about what the end result of that is, but without all the blood, guts, torture, and grotesque sexual content. The style works, but it is not without a couple of serious flaws.For starters, the film does not have a strong opening. Instead of quickly establishing what the film is about or setting any kind of tone or mood, it just drops us into the middle of the story without any sort of indication of what is going on. For the first fifteen to twenty minutes of the film, what is depicted is basically just a bunch of stuff happening. The audience feels immediately disconnected from the film and the result is extremely frustrating. It was so frustrating for me when I first watched it that I had to keep shutting the film off over and over. It took me four separate times to be able to make it past the opening. I'm not sure how most people would be able to handle the way the film opens. Honestly, it's not a narrative problem, it's an editing problem. I felt that Canadian director Bruce Mcdonald, who I think it very talented by the way, should have looked for a stronger way for his audience to digest the style. The style to which this is filmed in can easily be made gimmicky if not handled properly, and for the opening of this film it is not handled properly. Most viewers, if they are not really open-minded, will either leave the theater/room, or they will completely tune out of the film and will not even pay attention when the film's actual narrative comes into play.Once the film does pick up, things move much more smoothly. We are able to understand the plight of the Tracey Burkowitz and we feel for her. We watch her get bullied around at school, we witness her disturbing family situation, and we get to like her. We understand that she is a naive girl who has a tendency to get in way over her head in things and we understand how her warped psyche affects and damages her ability to function normally to the people around her. These particular moments are when the editing style really helps lend itself to the plot and the character. The editing technique comes off spectacularly well at times and helps to also create a strong sense of paranoia and unpredictability in the plot through it's depiction of warped perspective. There are some truly haunting scenes such as the scene in which her drunk father tells her, as a young little girl, the story of how they found her younger brother in Alaska. I found many of these moments to be quite touching and all too effective particularly one in which Tracey receives a necklace from her brother on her birthday. The performance of Ellen Page is also incredibly realistic. Ellen Page has played the role of the creepy teenage girl four times now(Hard Candy, The Tracey Fragments, Juno, and Smart People), and each time it's a completely different character and each time she really is able to lend a lot of personality and depth to the character. I've always been impressed with her performances. Her character here is realistic and, at times, frightening in her naive nature. She has the perfect amount of weird awkwardness that the role requires of her character.I did, however, still have problems. I wasn't fond of the rest of the characters in this film. I understand that with this film's style and with a 77 minute runtime that there isn't exactly much room for character development, but I would have liked it if even one of the characters did something unexpected. As a result of this the film gets intensely predictable when it really shouldn't be. I like it when these kinds of films have more realism to them, but this film takes the character stereotypes of an almost sickening extreme, such as the scene where she has to hide from a thug behind a curtain. I saw the outcome of that scene coming within minutes. So because of all this, the characters surrounding Tracey are all cartoon characters practically and the film feels cold and far too simplistic than it really is.Despite the slow start and the one-dimensional characters, I still recommend 'The Tracey Fragments'. Ellen Page's performance is powerful, the style of the films comes off strong, and there are enough strong moments throughout that make the film worth seeing. It's certainly not anywhere near as bad as most people seem to be saying. There's more than enough worthwhile material here to make the film work. The film is short, effective, and to the point. It's a very powerful little film that I quite enjoyed. That's about all I can about my feelings toward it.

Is there a better center for exploring simultaneous hallucinations than a "late blooming," possibly bipolar 15 year old girl, with creepy parents?It becomes easy to run into a point of view that has confusing, shifting vision. The trick is to show enough of a world that makes sense that we can see what doesn't. You need the horizon to know when you tilt. This is hard because you have to fold the two views into one eye, seeing the girl and seeing as the girl. Some of this has to make sense spatiotemporally and some has to goof with that same sense using it against itself.Along comes the device of multiple images on a screen. This dramatically increases the difficulty of shaping the cinematic effects, offering us challenging new dimensions.I liked this. I think it worked. Because it works and is new — and I mean pretty much wholly new discounting Greenaway. "Time Code" and "Hotel" played with these sorts of notions experimentally. This is placed between them, and with serious intentions to hurt. Hurt it does, and that's the first milestone for something that could matter. Ellen Page is more here of what she gained fame for in "Juno." She's fantastic. It makes Hilary Swank in "Boys Don't Cry" seem pretty tame.Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.

http://eattheblinds.blogspot.comYou can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig. As of late, this phrase has been front-page headlines for all the wrong reasons, but regardless, the meaning behind it stays the same. For all intents and purposes, Bruce McDonald's The Tracey Fragments is a melodrama of After-School Special proportions, regardless of how hard the director (and his editor) try to dress it up as something more profound. Fragmented images act as multiple windows, forming an endlessly elaborate collage, peering into the dark recesses of 15 year-old Tracey Berkowitz's life and mind. This technique has been around for decades, it's origins forever tied to the annals of experimental film-making. Long before Bruce McDonald, the work of Stan Brakhage (the most prolific and famed of all experimentalists) was co-opted by music videos directors who made famous the disjointed, stylistic flourishes common to MTV in the 1980's. TTF looks and feels more like a music video than a conventional narrative film and since most kids who grew up on music videos have come of age, stylistically TTF cannot define itself as anything new.But amidst a mine field of cookie cutter Hollywood films, TTF does manage to distinguish itself as something more than the melodrama it merely is. If you can make it through the first 20-minutes you'll be rewarded, since at this point there seems to be a departure from the conventions of story telling into the hyper-personal, interior realm of a 15 year-old kid struggling with herself, her family and the unforgiving world around her. This portrayal may be framed within the plot driven melodrama, but McDonald reaches beyond plot by emphasizing the impressionistic quality of the visual collage he has painstakingly cobbled together. This is when the film becomes interesting, when the visuals take over and expand the film watching experience into something haunting and poetic. The dreariness and drab of Tracey's lower-class life transcends into something beautiful as each frame of her collage acts as a window into her soul. Ultimately, TTF's greatest asset is it's ability to effectively portray the mixed up mind of a teenager who is desperately trying to make sense of her world. We've all been there and we've all lived it, now you can relive the experience only this time, without the acne scars.

An exercise in experimental cinema. The director is too busy experimenting with nifty editing techniques and an unusual visual style rather than focusing on telling a cohesive and interesting narrative. The director's visual tricks aren't even as effective as the director probably wants them to be. At the beginning the movie the visuals are come off as genuinely unique. By the end of the visual tricks become repetitive, annoying and irritating.I'm usually fine with abstract, indirect, non-linear storytelling, but to keep my attention it has to be at least mildly interesting. Ellen Page is decent, but she isn't given enough to do.My patience was tested while watching this tedious production.