Filmfest diary 1.07: Chaos

Today I saw two films at the festival that were told in somewhat unconventional ways. I first watched Tracey Fragments in the early afternoon, and then went to another theatre to watch Eastern Promises (a non-festival screening – it came out today). Going by the screen time and the length of the movie, the timing seemed to be pretty convenient – I had around 35 minutes after the movie to get to my second festival film of the day, Chaotic Ana, and it only took around 15-20 minutes to get in between the theatres. Alas, things don’t always work out the way you plan.

I knew I was going to be cutting it close when Eastern Promises only started after a good 15-20 minutes of advertisements and previews. The movie itself was fairly bland (I had been expecting more from Cronenberg, though I suppose the weakness was more in the script than anything). After the movie, it was raining, which made me think that my luck was not going to be turning any time soon. I was right, as there was a long delay at the connecting train station, prompting me to run out of the station and to the theatre. It was actually quite cool frantically running to the theatre – I felt like I was in some action movie, weaving through human traffic on the wet concrete as rain fell. I got there on time, just as the movie was being introduced by a festival programmer, and sat down at the back, panting heavily as I caught my breath and cooled down.

Anyway, without further adieu, I present today’s reviews.

The Tracey Fragments
Director: Bruce McDonald
Country: Canada

The Tracey Fragments follows Tracey (Ellen Page), a 15-year-old girl who has run away from dysfunctional home in search of her missing brother, Sonny. The basic premise is pretty simple, but the story is told from Tracey’s perspective, and so we get a lot of disorganized memories as she recalls the events of the past few days.

What makes this film unique from other films with a disjointed narrative is that it is shot almost entirely in split screen segments, meaning that, most of the time, there is more than one shot on screen at the same time. Often, there are multiple shots, and it was not uncommon for these images to come and go rapidly, and in quick succession. I loved how Tracey’s story was told, and the fact that there was so much going on in every single minute of this movie, its short length (only 77 minutes) did not at all detract from it. Canadian Ellen Page depicts teen angst masterfully in this movie, and it is no surprise that she is one of the emerging (and I hate to use that word because, in my mind, she has already proved herself in several performances) talents in cinema today.

This is one of those films that really stand out from the rest for its style that is beyond the norm. Not only that, but it is a great story (adapted for the screen by Maureen Medved, based on her novel of the same title) too. I highly recommend it to anybody who enjoys movies.

Q&A: Bruce McDonald answered several questions about the movie and made several jokes (which may not have been jokes) about doing drugs during the editing process, which took 7 months (the filming only taking around 14 days). One of the things that he mentioned was that they have released all of the footage that they filmed for the movie on the website for people to re-edit and are soon holding a competition for the best use of the footage.

Caótica Ana
(Chaotic Ana)
Director: Julio Medem
Country: Spain

Ana (Manuela Vellés) is a young artistic talent from Ibiza that is taken into the big city by Justine (Charlotte Rampling), a talent scout of sorts. As she begins to expand her horizons in art and in life, she soon discovers that her daydreams are more than what they seem. Reluctantly, she tries to decipher what these images mean through hypnosis, and at the same time she tries to make sense of her own life.

This is, essentially, a coming of age film. It seems that it was told in such a way that it parallels the hypnosis that Ana undergoes during the film – it begins with the number 10 being shown on the screen, and then starts to count down after every few narrative sequences. I didn’t completely understand certain aspects of this, so I can’t really explain it in more detail at the moment, but the film was interesting enough to make me want to watch it again to fully comprehend what Julio Medem was trying to do.

This is a daring movie, and is not for everybody. At any given point in the movie it can be fun, shocking, surprising, philosophical, and dramatic. Overall, I enjoyed it.