I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

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.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Ever notice whenever a work of art is referred to as "experimental" it usually sucks? Not so here, if "The Tracey Fragments" is indeed experimental, I'd have to say the experiment produced successful results. The gimmick here is that the entire film is presented with multiple cameras showing different "fragments" of Tracey's memories.In the DVD bonus feature, director Bruce McDonald says he used this method to convey the nature of memories. And true, if you think about it, how often do you have a memory that plays out like a linear story? Most often memories jump back & forth, focus on different objects, change perspective and become intertwined with other memories.If you're ready for a disorienting experience like this, then you'll enjoy this movie because, while being difficult to digest, it's ultimately a rewarding experience. Tracey (expertly played by Ellen Page) is a 15-year-old outcast who is constantly ridiculed & abused by schoolmates, parents and strangers. The movie recounts 2 or 3 intense days in her life, beginning with the story of her missing brother, jumping back to a few days before, and eventually coming full circle and then beyond. While the story itself is linear, the narration (through Tracey's memories) is anything but linear, and the multiple cameras add a deeper dimension of confusion.But whether you grasp every individual camera & scene or not, the story unfolds clearly, and by the end we are aware of what happened with a few dramatic surprises to boot. Although I hate the phrase "coming of age story" because it conjures up images of extreme boredom and sappiness, this movie is a great, gritty, powerful coming of age story. It's a lot like how I would imagine the book "Catcher in the Rye" with its seemingly random episodes that are glued together by a common theme. In the case of "The Tracey Fragments" (much like Catcher) the theme is about a young adolescent who sees himself/herself as the protector of a younger child; however, the protector herself is coming apart from the strain of protecting innocence while losing her own innocence.Although the character Tracey is a lot like Ellen Page's character in "Juno" as well as her character in "Whip It", don't expect the same quirky humor because "The Tracey Fragments" is much darker and sometimes disturbing. You might crack a smile at some scenes, and she does have a few great sarcastic lines, but mostly this is a heavy drama with an emphasis on weird.There aren't many films I can compare this to, but one that comes to mind is the excellent "Man of the Year" (2002) starring John Ritter, a movie featuring about 2 dozen actors and 2 dozen cameras filming simultaneously in real time. Another film I'm reminded of is "Pi" (1998) the directoral debut of Darren Aronofsky who also did "Requiem for a Dream", "The Fountain" and "Black Swan". If you like dark films like those with unusual visual styles, give this one a whirl.

It's all about taste. But 6.0 on IMDb? Unbelievable.This is a superb film.SUPERB.Difficult subject matter? Yes.6.0? Don't make me laugh. Everyone's entitled to their opinion. That's why we have so many successful Hollywood blockbusters. Know what I mean? And those same people vote on IMDb.Watch this film. Expand your mind. You'll still be thinking about it days later.Trust Shimky. He won't waste your time.

...this was artsy nonsense with a capital fartsy, no two ways about it. Presented in a scattergun multi-frame format, Bruce "Picture Claire" McDonald's "experimental" rendition of novice novelist Maureen Medved's faux "Catcher in the Rye" tale of teen angst and despair (with a screenplay by the selfsame author) utterly fails to engage, primarily due to its highly stylized presentation, and almost completely unlikeable protagonist, a loopy 15-year-old outcast with some serious problems (like losing a little brother who thinks he's a dog) and an attitude that made this viewer wish she would follow him wherever he probably went. Starring Ellen "Hard Candy" Page, who riffs incessantly on the darker edges of her "Juno" persona, "The Tracey Fragments" is far too much of a labor to watch to get anything meaningful out of it. No doubt Ms. Medved was tickled to write her own screen adaptation--more power to her--but if her source material is anything like this film, it must be damned near unreadable, and just as depressingly irritating. I give it five stars strictly for the obvious love and craftsmanship that went into it, and a pretty decent soundtrack. Ms. Page is a fine actress, and I hope she got a good paycheck, but this is not the sort of pretentious twaddle I want to see her doing. Grow up, young lady, and start acting your age. Of slim peripheral interest: "The Tracey Fragments" features at least two kevinbacons to George Romero. I'll leave it to Constant Reader to discover them.

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.