Ever since Ellen Page became well known from her role in Juno, anything that she has made beforehand has become popular. I fell into this trap when I rented The Tracey Fragments. I’d read about the movie before hand and though it sounded interesting, and I have been impressed with Page before so I gave it a chance…I could not have been more wrong.

I really should have just taken the name of the movie literally – it really is fragmented. The whole movie is done in a specific style. It’s rare when you only see one screen, instead of several. The best way to describe it would be to say you have a picture in picture screen, but more than one picture at the same time. Sometimes they show the same thing sometimes all the screens are different. I get it, it’s supposed to be artsy, and cutting edge – it actually is just annoying to watch. I’ll give the editors credit for their hard work. I read that it took only 14 days to shoot the movie, but 9 months to edit! It’s pretty easy to see why it took them that long.

From what I got from the plot of this movie, if you’re still interested in reading what it’s about, is that Tracey is a 15-year-old runaway. She’s the outcast in school, and spends more time in her daydreams that actual reality. One cold day she is watching her little brother who thinks he is a dog and they are playing fetch. Her dream boy distracts her, and the next thing she knows her brother is gone. Most of the plot is driven by her trying to find him, but the story goes back and forth. There seem to be some subplots, but they were even more confusing to follow. To Page’s credit though, she does well with what she had to work with. I believe her panic when she is racing around to find he brother. The other standout performance (the only other one) is Slim Twig’s Billy Zero. Billy is Tracey’s dream boyfriend, but in real life a complete jerk. Twig does well showing both versions. The other performances are lacking, especially those of Tracey’s parents (Erin McMurtry and Ari Cohen). Her parents seemed kind of oblivious most of the time, and the actors weren’t much better. Did they just wake up out of their trance and think “hey, I’m in a movie today,” because that’s what it felt like to me.

I hope nobody tries to copy The Tracey Fragments and use the multiple screens aspect. I think the movie would have been interesting without adding all of that, but it just ruined the movie for me and I’ll have to give it a D. Only barely passing due to the two performances that made this movie worthwhile to keep watching and not just turn off.