Slamdance Spotlight: Fake Tattoos // Director Pascal Plante

The 24th annual Slamdance Film Festival held in Park City January 19-25 is contained within The Treasure Mountain Inn. Slamdance is a showcase for raw and innovative filmmaking self governed - By Filmmakers, For Filmmakers. The year-round organization serves new and emerging artists, filmmakers and storytellers.

One film has the distinction of being selected to screen at both Slamdance and Berlinale 2018. Fake Tattoos by director Pascal Plante, tells the story of two young people who meet each other at a time in their lives when they are experiencing grief and aloneness yet find a way to reach out and lift up each other.

Pascal lives in Montreal and chose to shoot most of the movie there, some in his own neighborhood. “Actually, the cast/crew had lunch at my place quite often during filming! In Quebec cinema, we have a strange tendency to hide the city; to make it an anonymous place. For me, it was important to show some landmark  buildings (example: the Olympic Stadium) and to take advantage of the personality of the city” notes Pascal.

The artistic use of graffiti covered walls, colorful skateboard park and chalk murals add fun bursts of life to otherwise dull settings.

At heart, Fake Tattoos is a love story and Pascal was inspired mainly by what he wasn't seeing enough of in movies. He explains “Romantic comedies are a very coded genre, and often follow the same proven recipe. We threw away the good ol' three act structured romcom, and replaced it with a more relatable, looser character-driven film, with a punk edge (a tribute to my own teenage years). In a way, the Before Sunrise/Sunset/Midnight trilogy by Richard Linklater was a great influence.”

The film is full of contrasts from the very different personalities of the young lovers, the environments in which they lived, relationship with their mothers and the cause of their grief which combine to make a powerful story.

They accomplished their shoot within a very short 15 day time frame.  The crew was lucky to stay on budget and grateful for funding from Telefilm Canada and Quebec Arts Council.

This will be the fourth appearance of a Pascal Plante film at Slamdance, but his first at Berlinale held in February in Berlin, Germany.

If Pascal could write the script for the Fake Tattoos premiere, it would have a happy ending. “I hope the audience will fall in love with the characters as they fall in love with each other on screen.“

Information about Slamdance can be found at slamdance.com, and tickets/passes for the festival can be found here.