| As ellen-page.net has a press accreditation of the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, I'm proud to bring you the latest photos from this event. Next to a press conference there is a scheduled screening of »The Tracey Fragments« today. Ellen Page and director Bruce McDonald are going to present the movie in person.
» Ellen Page at the opening of the Karlovy Vary IFF (06/29/2007) «
  
© Film Servis Festival Karlovy Vary. All rights reserved.
» Ellen Page with friend Mark Rendall and director Bruce McDonald (06/30/2007) «
   
© Film Servis Festival Karlovy Vary. All rights reserved.
» Ellen Page, Bruce McDonald and Sarah Timmins at the press conference of TTF (07/01/2007) «
  
© Film Servis Festival Karlovy Vary. All rights reserved.
Young star of intense Canadian film planning to unwind on Eastern European backpack trek
 Canadian actress Ellen Page is here at KV IFF presenting The Tracey Fragments, in which she plays a teenage girl teetering on the edge, as her life crashes down around here. Page, an unusually young-looking 20, is perhaps the best thing about the picture, which – with its multiple split screen – can be something of a sensory overload. In a café at the Thermal, she spoke about her demanding roles in The Tracey Fragments and 2005’s Hard Candy, and the contrasting experience of making the third movie in the X-Men series. And the actress revealed that she’s not flying home from Karlovy Vary – she is setting off from Prague on a backpacking trek around Eastern Europe.
The Tracey Fragments is a strong film but it isn’t the easiest of films to watch, because the screen is split so much, sometimes you have eight different images. How do you think that approach on the part of the director Bruce McDonald works?
»I was nervous about it, but I trust Bruce and I have a lot of respect for Bruce and I just did it. I was interested in seeing the final product – I was worried that you’d be emotionally disconnected from Tracey, because it’s all over the place. But I found that the people who I know who’ve seen it are usually very, very attached to her. It really displays in a unique way someone’s mind disintegrating, because our minds aren’t linear – they’re all over the place.«
It’s a very intense role – lots of anger, lots of shouting. What was the experience of playing the part of Tracey like for you?
»It was pretty crazy, because we shot it in 14 days, which is the shortest time I’ve ever shot a film. I was Tracey pretty much for the whole film. It was just about attaching my heart to her heart, and just diving in and going for it.«
Both The Tracey Fragments and your earlier film Hard Candy deal with some of the darker areas of life. But I believe in both films you were playing a girl who was actually younger than you in reality. Would that have helped you at all to deal with these difficult roles?
»I don’t know. Sometimes the younger you are it makes it more intense, because the more raw your experience is. But then also I suppose in a film like Hard Candy Haley’s point of view is very much black and white. So it depends, I suppose.«
Often we hear older actresses saying they can’t get good parts, there are no good parts for actresses above a certain age, say 40. What’s it like for a young actress like yourself? Do you get offered many good parts?
»It’s interesting, a lot of the scripts you read for teenage girls are bland and stereotypical. Or it’s the role of the girlfriend, and the story often revolves around a male figure. But I have to say I’ve been extremely lucky – any script that I’ve fallen in love with pretty much I’ve put my heart into pursuing, and I have to say I’ve just been really lucky to be able to do good roles.«
You were also of course in the third X-Men film – how did that experience compare to working on a small film like The Tracey Fragments?
»It’s just massively different in every single aspect. You go from the Tracey budget, which is less than a million – and you can imagine the jump to X-Men. But it’s interesting to experience that kind of filmmaking.«
Some of your co-stars in the third X-Men are pretty big actors, like Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart. The film wasn’t exactly Macbeth, but what was it like for you working with these heavyweight, great actors?
»It’s pretty amazing. It’s pretty amazing to just watch them and take something from that kind of film, that kind of genre, and turn it into something where you can just sit and look at them in awe. The other great thing is to realize that they’re just super cool people, and that probably has a lot to do with why they’re so successful.«
My final question is, what’s next for Ellen Page? What are you working on now, what are you planning?
»I’ve just worked a lot, I’ve shot a few films in the last while that are coming out. So I’m actually taking a break now and I’m going backpacking through Eastern Europe. So I’m extremely excited about that.«
Are you starting your backpack trek from here, by any chance?
»Yeah, tomorrow I go with my friend Mark who is here with me to Prague. We’re going to stay in the Czech Republic for a bit and then Poland, Slovakia, Serbia, Hungary, Romania, Moldova. It’s going to be wild.«
Source: Karlovy Vary IFF
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