Review: "The Tracey Fragments"

In her latest film, The Tracey Fragments, she plays a disaffected 15 year old girl who is an outcast at school and constantly teased for her lack of breasts. We are introduced to Tracey on a public bus, where she sits in the back naked but for a ratty old curtain wrapped around herself. She is looking for her nine year old brother, who has gone missing after she hypnotized into believing he is a dog.
If you're looking for an easy, normal movie, stop reading now.
What makes the film so unique, and really the only reason it is getting any attention apart from Ellen Page, is that nearly every frame is done in split screen. Nearly every second of the movie is split into sections, giving us alternate views of the action, and often fragments of Tracey's thoughts or memories at any given moment.

The story is essentially told backwards. We meet Tracey on the bus after all the action has happened, and through her (often fractured) eyes we see the events that led her to where she is now. It is a world populated with high school bullies, manly female psychiatrists, deadbeat parents, angsty teenagers, shady street figures, and mobsters. We're a long way from Juno here.
It's a dark journey, and one that is ultimately a downer. But the film has a singularly wry sense of humor that one comes to expect with the presence of Page. Her outsider observations are razor sharp and often very funny, but I never felt like the film added up to a satisfying whole.

There are quite a few things to like about The Tracey Fragments, but the ultimate feeling I left with was one of contrivance - of difference for difference's sake. Individual pieces of the film work, but they don't come together to make a complete experience. It's an experimental film, and as such some things work and others don't. But you have to give the filmmakers credit for trying to do something different and unusual. It's an attitude cinema could use more of, even if doesn't get hit the mark every time.
GRADE - **½ (out of four)
THE TRACEY FRAGMENTS; Directed by Bruce McDonald; Stars Ellen Page, Ari Cohen, Maxwell McCabe-Locos, Slim Twig, Erin McMurtry; Not Rated
Comments
I really disliked this the first time I saw it at VIFF but on second viewing a few weeks later, I was surprised at how much more I enjoyed the film. Because I knew the direction in which the story was going, I could concentrate more of my attention on what was going on in the various different frames making the experience that much more intense. McDonald places a lot of the emotional bits in the peripherals of the frame.
I urge folks to give this multiple viewings. It's extremely rewarding.