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published on September 18, 2008 The Tracey Fragments deploys variable frame size and split screen effects to create contemporary film’s most complex and dazzling synthesis of graphic novel and film. The Tracey Fragments rejects the super-heroics of recent Marvel and DC efforts and carries through with thematic territory covered by Ghost World in focusing on the behaviour and maturity of teenage girls. However, it is radically different in tone from graphic novel film fusion auteur Terry Zwigoff and is closer in look, texture and subject matter to the work of Gus Van Sant and Larry Clark in Elephant, Drugstore Cowboy and Kids respectively. It is also the most involving look at developmental psychological illness from David & Lisa through to Donnie Darko and formally contemporizes experiments begun, but left, by Peter Greenaway in the late 1980s in A TV Dante. Dream-like superimposition, densely layered imagery and hallucinatory voices all converge in the initial scenes. Subsequently, complex uses of split-screen space document a 15 year old girl who believes her brother is missing as a result of her hypnotizing him into thinking he is a dog. Her mental state, however, is glimpsed and revealed in fragments, segments that call into question the girl whose subjectivity this film dramatizes in a style of collage and juxtaposition. Cleverly, however, the few full frame scenes offer a stability which is swept away and shattered by the split-screen techniques: a brilliant demonstration of subjective identity dissolution and perhaps an incipient schizophrenia. The visual style thus correlates nicely to the study of behavioural teen socialization. One of the ambiguities of the graphic novel form was its ability to suggest states of mind between the tense and the thoughtful. Sadly, most comic books and the films made from them concentrated on narrative possibilities rather than the psychological possibilities of the medium: confronting such makes The Tracey Fragments unique in movies inspired by the graphic novel format rather than its usual content. As inventive as it is though, the constant barrage of imagery demands much viewer attention, rewarded with a riveting performance by Best Actress Oscar-nominee Ellen Page. Alternating frame sizes in conjunction with camera movement and a raw digital video immediacy make this film aesthetically adventurous. The Tracey Fragments is the ultimate comic book movie: not because of its content but because of its form, which resembles a graphic novel with moving panels. The drama of a 15 year old girl in social circumstances beyond her control scores on the level of social observation of teenage behaviour (teasing over breast size, experimenting with makeup), documentation of the pressures of incipient adolescence (drugs and delinquent peers) and visualization the dangerous thrill of beginning independence in an urban environment: making for the most affecting portrait of a despairing, sexually conflicted teenage girl since Uli Edel’s Christiane F. The DVD comes with a nicely illustrated, collector’s edition comic book of the character’s exploits. Rating: 8 out of 10 Source: URL=http://www.dvdresurrections.com/MovieReview_TraceyFragments.html]www.dvdresurrections.com[/URL] |
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© 2006-2010 Dominik Keppner
© 2006-2010 Dominik Keppner
