As one of Canada’s most celebrated independent filmmakers (Roadkill, Highway 61, Hard Core Logo), director Bruce McDonald has bootstrapped his share of edgy movies. But none so creatively, or literally, as his latest film, The Tracey Fragments, adapted from the novel of the same name by Maureen Medved.

“I loved the novel, loved Tracey’s voice, so I optioned the book with a pair of cowboy boots, as I was between jobs at the time,” says McDonald, who mailed his boots to Medved to seal the deal. When, months later, Medved delivered an excellent first draft script, McDonald showed it to producer Sarah Timmins, who put even more significant skin in the game by securing financing.

“I fell in love with the character of Tracey Berkowitz,” says Timmins. “It was just such a rare depiction of a strong complicated young woman coming of age in a very unusual way. I knew that I had to make the film happen.”

Landing Page

But McDonald and Timmins knew also that persuading an audience to follow 15-year-old Tracey — "just a normal girl who hates herself”—across a harrowing story arc required a leading actress of considerable force and skill. The film needed “to be grounded by a bravura performance from a very young actor, or people wouldn't relate to Tracey and her journey,” says Timmins. So they counted themselves blessed when Ellen Page, the actress both considered perfect for Tracey, committed to playing the role.

Split Decision

With his first-choice actress set to interpret a first-rate script, McDonald seemed set up for a smooth, straight run to an exceptional cinematic result. But bringing Tracey to the screen got a little more crooked and a lot more interesting when McDonald, no big fan of the smooth and the straight, decided to tell Tracey’s story using dynamic, layered split screens in nearly every frame of the film.

He reasoned that the technique — inspired by sources as diverse as The Thomas Crown Affair, The Boston Strangler, a Beastie Boys video, and Piet Mondrian's grid paintings — represented his best chance of giving visual expression to the state of Tracey’s mind, the real subject of both the script and the novel.

“By editing the film in this split screen fractured/Cubist/Pop Art kind of way, we felt that we could capture Tracey’s interior emotional state quite well,” says McDonald.