I saw my first Berlinale 07 film earlier this evening: The Tracey Fragments by Canadian director Bruce McDonald (who was the only staff & cast member who attended the screening and took part in the Q&A session afterwards), featuring the wonderful Ellen Page as leading actress and a score by Broken Social Scene. The film itself was brilliant and unique, both plot-wise and visually. Shots from different angles weren’t arranged frame by frame but shown as smaller screens all in one frame, or blended into each other, using different filters and such. It looked really fresh and worked perfectly as an artistic tool to support the flow of the narration. The events weren’t told in a chronological order and sometimes it was hard to tell what was ‘real’ and what was only happening in Tracey’s imagination.
On the surface it might be just another film about a distressed teenaged girl but the complicated, outstanding plot and the unique visuals really make this movie stand out. I really enjoyed watching it, at least as much as you can ‘enjoy’ slightly disturbing movies like this. But it made me think and it made me appreciate the fact that there are filmmakers who make movies about and for people who are different.
