It’s a futile effort, though, as writer Maureen Medved regularly undercuts her protagonist’s intense disorientation by saddling her with Juno-esque quips (“Happy people, they friggin’ depress me, you know?”) that even Page-by virtue of her ho-hum delivery-seems to find lame. Playing a character whose hang-ups have textbook root causes (dysfunctional parents, school bullies), and whose quest to locate brother Sonny (Zie Souwand) is rambling and insipid, Page nonetheless does her best to deliver a focused portrait of adolescent turmoil. These elements, as well as Tracey’s pointless interactions with a cross-dressing psychiatrist (Julian Richings), all contribute to a collage structure that strains for expressionistic profundity but, because Tracey’s distress never seems to warrant such aggressively schizo treatment, amounts to simply avant-garde fiddling. Clumsily externalizing the internal, McDonald pads out his 77-minute indie with symbolic imagery (crows, naked body parts, a shot of a closing door that, when tipped on its side, resembles a closing coffin) and some rock-video fantasy interludes in which Tracey imagines herself as the girlfriend of new classmate Billy Zero (SlimTwig). Mundane incidents are presented from different and/or alternate perspectives that offer scant insight into her predicament, so that, for example, Tracey is-for no appreciable reason-simultaneously seen smiling at and ignoring a random, cackling elderly man on the bus. Yet as the story slowly and non-chronologically reveals the events that led Tracey to her current circumstances, this stylistic tactic quickly comes to seem like a smokescreen aimed at obscuring the film’s narrative slimness and psychological shallowness. The 2007 paperback release of The Tracey Fragments, a media tie-in to the film adaptation, contained multiple pages of full-colour screenshots of the main featured actors including Elliot Page, Julian Richings and Slim Twig.Director Bruce McDonald splits his screen eight ways to Sunday in The Tracey Fragments, a splintered form ostensibly intended to match the psyche of his protagonist, a screwed-up teenager named Tracey Berkowtiz (Ellen Page) who, at outset, is wrapped in a shower curtain while sitting on a city bus. The novel ends with Tracey still on the public city bus, remarking (of finding Sonny) "we're getting warmer."
Unable to cope with whatever has happened, Tracey continues to wander, staying with strangers and putting her life in danger as she travels from place to place. She suggests that her parents never wanted Sonny, noting a bizarre story her father shared with her when she was young about a female dog being killed after birthing Sonny. Tracey fantasizes about starting a metalcore band with Billy under a stage name she's invented in her head, "Estuary Palomino." She hints at the possibility that during a bad blizzard in her home city, Sonny may have wandered off and drowned in a nearby river. Tracey eventually reveals a sexual encounter with "Billy Speed", the boy from her school who she likes. Tracey also shares stories about her grandmother, a woman with the same mental afflictions as Tracey herself Tracey's grandmother faced an apparent home invasion and sexual assault in her home in Poland. Hecker, a homely psychiatrist whose ethical obligations prevent her from being emotionally invested in Tracey as a patient. The closest person Tracey has to a friend is Dr. Tracey narrates as she travels from bus to bus naked under a shower curtain, unable to return home for fear that her emotionally distant parents won't accept her back. Tracey Berkowitz, a young Canadian teenager, suffers from mental health issues, and as an unreliable narrator, she gradually reveals a dark family trauma involving her little brother, Sonny Berkowitz, and a boy from Tracey's school. Medved wrote the screenplay for the film adaptation, which was directed by Bruce McDonald. The novel tells a story of rage, frustration and neglect in Tracey's life, and her search for salvation in the face of tragedy.
The tracey fragments series#
The construction of the narrative takes place as a series of vignettes, or the titular "fragments", of scenes from a young girl's life. It was first published in 1998 at House of Anansi Press. The Tracey Fragments is a novel by Canadian author Maureen Medved. JSTOR ( October 2021) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message).Unsourced material may be challenged and removed.įind sources: "The Tracey Fragments" novel – news Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources.
The tracey fragments full#
This article needs additional citations for verification. The Tracey Fragments is a raw, moving account that immerses the reader into the labyrinth of a troubled, adolescent psyche, full of twists and turns, fear and.
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