Paul Haggis’ Crash, of course, didn’t spawn sprawling ensembles centered around a single social issue or violent incident (this strain of American indie cinema owes a lot to Robert Altman, naturally), but its Best Picture Oscar victory did seemingly help jump-start a wave of self-deluded imitators who seem to feel that overt emotionalism ladled over a loosely connected narrative is a surefire sign of Important Filmmaking. That’s the case with Fragments, an achingly sincere slice of hooey in which those whose lives are touched by a random shooting react by acting out in different ways.

A gunman strolls into a diner in the small California town of Belmont and three minutes later, after shooting dead a handful of people, leaves a group of disparate survivors whose lives he’s changed forever. Single mom and waitress Carla Davenport (Kate Beckinsale, above left) starts neglecting her infant son, and latching onto the concern of a local doctor. After losing her father, Anne Hagen (Dakota Fanning) suddenly and aggressively finds religion, which freaks out both her mother (Jeanne Tripplehorn) and friend Jimmy Jaspersen (Josh Hutcherson), the latter of whom was with her at the diner. Gambling addicted, terminally ill driving instructor Charlie Archenault (Forest Whitaker, sporting a terrible wig), meanwhile, leaves town suddenly in search of a winning streak at a nearby casino. This leaves his single daughter Kathy (Jennifer Hudson) worried and unaware of his whereabouts.

Then there’s Dr. Bruce Laraby (Guy Pearce, above right), who wasn’t even at the scene, but stopped by for coffee on the way to work, and unknowingly held open the door for the gunman on his way out. Bruce reacts by taking a more hands-on approach with the migraine headaches of his wife, Joan (Embeth Davidtz), slipping her drugs to induce them so that he can swoop in and effectively “save” her by playing caregiver, thereby giving him an indubitable power that he cannot always statistically achieve in his hospital emergency room.

For the most part these stories unfold in discrete fashion, though Carla crushes on Dr. Laraby, and a silent Jimmy habitually avoids grief counselor Ron Abler (Troy Garity), whose services his parents (Jackie Earle Haley and Robin Weigert) are split over. Anne also counsels Jimmy — bullies him, really, via instant messenger, in one of the movie’s more cringe-inducing elements — to stay away from Ron. It’s this latter mystery, as much as anything else, that serves as the plot’s engine, driving it forward.

Directed by Rowan Woods (Little Fish), Fragments is preciously assured of its status as a shattered-soul drama. The performances in general bend toward the physically signifying, and
Fanning’s wayward, grating turn in particular is powered by faithful speechifying, and
not rooted in any realistic emotion. (Through it all, it’s Pearce alone who holds serve, trading in a smart, less-is-more style that makes one wish the movie ducked out and followed him alone.) Vast portions of Fragments are stillborn — everything having to do with Charlie and Kathy, for instance — and others, like the Anne-Jimmy subplot, not satisfyingly sketched. Roy Freirich’s screenplay, originally titled Winged Creatures, confuses abstruseness for psychological penetration; it’s like he wrote it while listening to Aimee Mann, and convinced himself that minimalist metaphor and simple parallelism (Jimmy’s dad coped with the loss of his eldest son by clamming up!) would in and of themselves automatically confer significance upon what is otherwise a pretty wan narrative. Fragments is actually a more telling and appropriate title, though, because it tips one off as to the unsatisfyingly fractured nature of this story. (Peace Arch, R, 96 minutes)

This could rightly be considered only half a review, and thus uninformed, as I unfortunately got separated from the concluding reels of Mark Hartley’s new documentary Not Quite Hollywood about halfway through a screening. But the first detailed examination and celebration of wild Australian genre cinema from the 1970s and early ’80s has more than enough re-tilled salaciousness, wit and good-natured reminiscence — even in its first 45 minutes or so — to merit a look from cinephiles looking to expand their frame of bawdy reference.

In contrast to Stateside grindhouse flicks or same-era exploitation fare from Brazil and other South American countries, unabashedly commercial Australian films were often less compartmentalized than their international peers. “Down under,” movies of the Carter and early Reagan years — which were readily available in America on big city arthouse screens, as part of a wave of foreign cinema that was predicated on sales of the exotic, no matter the narrative specifics — were basically divided into just two camps: austere fare like Picnic at Hanging Rock, The Getting of Wisdom, My Brilliant Career and Breaker Morant and then… well, everything else.

In 1971, with the introduction of the R certificate, Australia’s censorship regime went from repressive to very liberal-minded virtually overnight. This fact, combined with the commercial mindset of many nascent Australian filmmakers who savvily created works that reflected the “wild Aussie” personalities and natural landscapes that they believed international audiences most of all wanted to see (and/or bagged on the British, a rival dating back to the country’s founding), helped usher in a wild and woolly period of anything-goes native cinema, full of abundant gore, nudity, gross-out gags and the like.

Hartley loads up his Not Quite Hollywood with clips of other movies, which contributes to a dizzying pace, but he also does a good job of tying together all the personalities on both sides of the camera, and highlighting both individual breakouts (Tim Burstall’s wild 1971 comedy Stork, say) and overall trends. Interviewees include Felicity director John Lamond, along with other members of the raincoat brigade (Barry Humphries in particular gets in some saucy asides), as well as more “legit” (or at least mainstream recognizable) figures like Oscar winner George Miller. Of course, because he’s such a film geek, Quentin Tarantino even pops up.

The overall snapshot that comes into focus is one of unashamedly gleeful creation and experimentation — of a young, artistic aristocracy plugged into a surging wave of social change, and just making cinematic hay while the sun was out. It’s a lesson that a lot of navel-gazing American independent filmmakers — mired in achingly sincere apings of Hollywood convention, designed to catapult them to “the big leagues” — could actually stand to take to heart. For the film’s trailer and more information, click here. (Magnet, R, 103 minutes)