Karina on SpoutBlog

I’ve been tracking the odd pop cultural situation that awaits this month’s release of The Tracey Fragments for awhile now. The film, which I’ve written about before, stars Juno phenom Ellen Page; it premiered at Berlin in 2007 and played tons of festivals, but by year’s end had failed to secure U.S. theatrical distribution. Then, in February of this year, when Page was at the peak of her powers as a precocious Oscar nominee and face of one of the biggest “surprise” hits in recent memory, Tracey was picked up by ThinkFilm for domestic distribution.

This is a film which, despite positive reviews and an award from Berlin, went almost completely unnoticed when it screened at Toronto in September, largely because it didn’t have a distributor that could afford to hire track suited boys to pass out branded Tic Tacs on its behalf. And yet, as soon as ThinkFilm put out a new trailer for the film, it promptly attracted a bunch of negative blog attention, ranging from unfair to inaccurate.

There seems to be a common, incorrect assumption that Tracey was built in a lab to capitalize on Page’s presumed post-Juno hipster cred; about a month ago, Gawker branded Tracey “the trendiest, most mind-suckingly irritating movie ever to exist”––sight unseen, of course. But yesterday, Stu VanAirsdale at Gawker’s sister blog Defamer suggested that Tracey’s problem is its lack of trendiness, indicating that the film is being quietly “dumped” by its distributor.

Someone who didn’t know the history of The Tracey Fragments could read Stu’s post and assume that the film is a loser because it’s getting a (much) smaller release than Juno on a (much, much, MUCH) smaller marketing budget. But the fact is, it’s only getting a North American theatrical release at all because of Juno, and that’s not necessarily a sign of its quality, but a reflection of the fact that there’s no such thing as a North American distribution market for experimental film. There’s a difference between a film being “dumped”, and a non-commercial, non-studio film getting a chance at theatrical life because its star happens to be more famous now than she was 15 months ago when it first appeared on the festival circuit. ThinkFilm is not known for the huge media buys and coy platformed wide releases that the indie arms specialize in, and as far as I can tell, their handling of Tracey is pretty much business as usual.

All of this chatter points to the fact that Page’s involvement is a double-eged sword. Yes, her newfound fame has made Tracey a more viable commodity than it would have been otherwise, but it also attracts a brighter spotlight than a little Canadian art film can be expected to withstand gracefully. I just imagine Guy Maddin must wake up every morning and thank God that no one in My Winnipeg has become the subject of lesbian rumors on gossip blogs. (Actually, never mind––Guy Maddin would probably love that).