IFFBoston Watch: The Tracey Fragments

Ellen Page, of Juno fame, has another movie, and it looks...crazy wack-a-doo weird, which is a good thing, I think.

Here is what the IFF site says:

If Tracey Berkowitz (Ellen Page) is just a self-described "normal 15-year-old girl", how did she wind up sitting on the back of a bus, wearing nothing but a ragged shower curtain, looking for her lost little brother Sonny (who thinks he's a dog)? Well, her life is fraught with dysfunction from her parents, her shrink (the peculiar, androgynous Dr. Heker), her more popular classmates (who ostracize Tracey, cruelly referring to her as "It") and most of all, her obsessive crush Billy Zero, the dreamy, elusive new boy in school.

Adapted from Maureen Medved's novel, the film takes its title literally. It eschews a traditional linear narrative in favor of an audacious sound-and-vision collage with the screen continually split up into fragments. Instead of falling into a set pattern throughout, the fragments (which range from two to twenty at any given moment) appear, scatter and overlap in a seemingly infinite number of configurations. The fluid, jagged editing rhythms result in illusory tricks, often leaving the viewer wondering how or if a certain fragment is related to another. Fortunately, the style and story mesh perfectly; not only do we see many perspectives onscreen simultaneously but we also get a vivid sense how Tracey's reality and fantasy tend to blur (out of nowhere, a heavily stylized credits sequence appears for Tracey's own movie about her life). Featuring an effectively atmospheric score by Broken Social Scene, the film establishes a new creative standard for what one can accomplish with digital video.

-Chris Krioske

Showings:
Fri, Apr 25, 09:45 PM: Coolidge Corner Theater
Sun, Apr 27, 10:00 PM: Somerville Theater - Screen 1



I'll be there (at the Coolidge screening), and I'll let you people on the intraweb know what I think.

Also Playing Tonight: Big Man Japan (Fri, Apr 25, 09:30 PM: Somerville Theater - Screen 5)