The Tracey Fragments (film)

Plot

15-year-old Tracey Berkowitz (Ellen Page) is in her underwear under a tattered shower curtain at the back of a bus, looking for her little brother Sonny (Zie Souwand), who thinks he's a dog.

Tracey's journey leads into the dark underbelly of the city, into the emotional cesspool of her home, through the brutality of her high school, the clinical cat-and-mouse games with her shrink and her soaring fantasies of Billy Zero (Slim Twig) - her rock and roll saviour. Her travels also put her in contact with the seedier inhabitants of the city, like Lance (Maxwell McCabe-Lokos), her would-be saviour who ultimately puts her life in jeopardy.

Tracey's stories begin to intertwine truth with lies, and hope with despair, as she moves closer to the truth of Sonny's disappearance.

Cast

Music

The score is composed by and features music from Canadian indie rock group Broken Social Scene. The soundtrack also features Peaches, Foals, The FemBots, Slim Twig, Duchess Says, Rose Melberg and "Land Horses", a cover version of Patti Smith's "Horses" by Land of Talk's Elizabeth Powell. The Movie Network

Tracey Re:fragmented

Tracey Re:fragmented is a project by the director and producers that made available all footage from the film shoot to download and remix into "their own related projects, including music videos, new trailers or to re-edit the entire movie themselves". The footage was released under a Creative Commons licence as four torrents, each approximately four gigabytes in size. A contest was held for the best use of the footage from August 2007 until January 2008, with the winning material being included on the DVD release, including a video by Ottawa-based punk band Sedatives.

Adaptation

The movie was adapted into a comic book, also called The Tracey Fragments. The comic was available free during some early screenings of the film.

Critical reception

The Tracey Fragments received mixed reviews from critics. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a rating of 34%, based on 32 reviews, with an average rating of 4.9/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Splitscreen intensive and at times ambiguous, this Ellen Page vehicle cum psychodrama takes audacious risks that may confuse." On Metacritic, the film holds a score of 54 out of 100, based on 10 reviews, indicating "mixed or average reviews".

Awards and nominations