The Tracey Fragments is a 2007 Canadian psychological drama film directed by Bruce McDonald and written by Maureen Medved. Based on Medved's 1998 novel of the same name, it stars Elliot Page as Tracey Berkowitz exploring the city in search of her missing brother, presented in a nonlinear narrative and split screen format. The film premiered at the 57th Berlin International Film Festival, where it was awarded the Manfred Salzgeber Prize for innovative filmmaking.
Plot Fifteen-year-old Tracey Berkowitz is first seen naked in a tattered shower curtain at the back of a bus, looking for her little brother Sonny, who thinks he's a dog. The film shares its story in choppy, disjointed fragments, telling the story from Tracey's point of view. Tracey is a caustic, sarcastic, and vulgar teenager, living with her well-meaning but often verbally abusive and neglectful parents. Bullied at her public school, Tracey's closest person to a friend is her homely psychiatrist, Dr. Heker, who is at first cold to her and doubtful of her perception of the world as accurate. Tracey is seen briefly in a flashback at a police station, while her parents tearfully demand to know where their son is. Tracey reveals that she hypnotized Sonny into behaving like a dog, a game between siblings that actually manifested into Sonny acting like a dog all the time, angering her father, who finds it an annoying phase. Sonny gives Tracey a necklace on her birthday, and he's the only person who Tracey expresses a great deal of affection for. Not long after that, Sonny disappeared during a freak blizzard, something shown to be connected with an older boy Tracey had a crush on called "Billy Zero". She fantasizes about Billy and her in a famous tabloid relationship, in which they run a metalcore band duet with Tracey taking on the stage name "Estuary Palomino" and bleaching her hair blonde. Tracey's everyday world is shown to involve riding the buses in Manitoba repeatedly, looking for Sonny, having stopped attending classes or living at home. Dr. Heker becomes more curious about Tracey's strange behaviour, and wonders if she has borderline personality disorder. Tracey recalls in a flashback her father telling her a bedtime story about Sonny's birth as a child. He tells her that Sonny's mother was a dog who died up north, a statement that confuses Tracey. Meanwhile, on the bus, she begins associating with the other lost and homeless people of the city, mostly hipsters and junkies with similar lives to hers and not a lot of money or emotional support. Tracey witnesses physical violence, drug use, sex and alcohol consumption in her new environment. She asks Dr. Heker if she could rent a room in her house. Dr. Heker, pitying Tracey, explains that there are ethical boundaries preventing such an arrangement, and she urges Tracey to go home and reconcile with her family. Tracey stays in the apartment of a grown man, Lance, who promises to help her. She becomes fixated on a crow that keeps stopping by a broken window in the building, and she tries to fit in with an older adult crowd. When Tracey is nearly raped in the apartment, she uses a rusty tin can lid to defend herself, escaping with no clothes on, only the flower-print shower curtain around her shoulders that she grabbed from the apartment at the last minute. A final flashback reveals that, on the night of the blizzard, Tracey was grounded but escaped her house under the guise of "taking Sonny for a walk" while she went to meet Billy. Billy, only interested in hooking up, had sex with Tracey in the back of his car at a deserted park. During this time, Sonny disappeared. It is implied that he fell in the river and drowned. Tracey is devastated. A final fragment shows Tracey wandering naked under her shower curtain, ignorant of Billy's attempt to speak with her, through a Winnipeg park at night. The ground has grass on it, in contrast to the film's mostly winter weather and snow, suggesting a full season has gone by since Sonny's disappearance in the blizzard.
Cast Elliot Page as Tracey Berkowitz Ari Cohen as Mr. Berkowitz Maxwell McCabe-Lokos as Lance Erin McMurtry as Mrs. Berkowitz Slim Twig as Billy Zero Julian Richings as Dr. Heker Kate Todd as Debbie Dodge Ryan Cooley as David Goldberg Libby Adams as Young Tracey Berkowitz Zie Souwand as Sonny Berkowitz Derek Scott as Headstand Johnny Sydney Rodgers as Tracey Berkowitz Imagination Stephen Amell as Detective George Stroumboulopoulos as himself
Production
McDonald read the book and called it "like a contemporary Catcher in the Rye", and contacted Medved, who wrote a first draft script that was used in the film. McDonald decided to use multiframe techniques and split screen format with mosaic images, which was inspired by sources as diverse as The Thomas Crown Affair, The Boston Strangler, a Beastie Boys video, and Piet Mondrian's paintings. Using as many as eight frames at once, McDonald wanted to show the fragmented nature of Tracey's mind and offer "windows" into her consciousness, therefore each section of the screen offers a different perspective or camera angle of the same scene.
Casting Page was McDonald's first choice, and he originally talked to him when he was 15, the same age as the character. The actor had been recommended to him by Daniel MacIvor and Wiebke von Carolsfeld, the writer and director of the 2002 film in which Page stars, Marion Bridge. At the time, Page said he felt he wasn't quite ready to take on the part, which was described as "a gruelling portrait of a girl suffering from everything from psychiatric abuse to near rape". His decision turned out well, as McDonald wasn't able to raise the financing until Page was a little more grown up.
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