Meet the first living painting.
"It's a ruin!"
— Félicien Mézeray (discovering Legrain's "holiday cottage")
Le Tatoué (or The Tattoo) is a 1968 French comedy film directed by Denys de La Patellière, starring Jean Gabin, Louis de Funès and Henri Virlogeux.
Félicien Mézeray (de Funès) is an art dealer who discovers that a retired grumpy and hammy legionnaire, "Legrain" (Gabin), has a tattoo by the famous painter Amedeo Modigliani on his back. After unsuccessfully attempting to convince Legrain to sell his tattoo, Mézeray finally succeeds by promising to rebuild his holiday "cottage", which happens to be a castle in ruins... and things go From Bad to Worse.
Le Tatoué provides examples of:
- Big Eater: Legrain can eat impressive quantities
of French food in one sitting. (Traditional French food, not haute cuisine, meaning it's hardly dietetic.) - Boisterous Bruiser: Legrain is a larger-than-life veteran legionnaire who reacts to any slight to his honor by brandishing a sabre or calling for a duel. He also loves eating large quantities of French food and drinking.
- Bottomless Magazines: When Legrain and Mézeray are scaring the castle looters off with machinegun fire, they're never seen reloading at any point and nothing indicates that they had spare magazines to begin with.
- Establishing Character Moment: At the beginning, when Mézeray deals with the painter Dubois (a "naive" artist), he is unnecessarily rude to him and tries to buy his canvases at the lowest price.
- Even Evil Has Standards: Mézeray might be a A-grade Manipulative Bastard trying to sell a "painting" that he doesn't possess yet or to convince someone to sign a contract as fast as possible, but he is appalled when Legrain accuses him of attempted murder by sending him three goons (two are detectives hired by the American representatives when they are suspicious about Mézeray and one is from a TV Crew).Mézeray: What mercenaries?
Legrain: Your killers! No more lies and now the truth, the one and only or I stab!
Mézeray: NOOOO! Now listen to me... I swear on the Governor of the Banque de France's head I didn't send you killers. I had no reason to kill since I can get your tattoo in another way... - Every Man Has His Price: After his wife points out that is reckless to sell a tattoo that he technically doesn't own yet, he says the trope word-for-word or his name isn't Mézeray.
- Gratuitous English: One of the two American representatives sometimes uses English words during casual dialogue, but it's justified because he has a poor grasp of the French language and his associate (who speaks fluent French) does most of the talking anyway.
- Greed: During the diner scene at Legrain's castle, Félicien says he worked hard to rise up from poverty and comment on the radical difference between him and Legrain (adventurous legionnaire vs. materialistic arts dealer).Mézeray: [talking about a painting] Do you sell it?
Legrain: Give me a break with all your picture trading... - Ham-to-Ham Combat: No surprise here after their legendary scene in The Trip Across Paris, but most of De Funès and Gabin's interactions are a contest of who can ham it up the most. And this time around, De Funès actually manages to fully keep up with Gabin's ham!
- Height Angst: After Legrain has learned that Mézeray wants to remove the skin from his back to get his tattoo, he scornfully calls him a "Horrible Gnome". While Mézeray has cowered in fear during the scene, he briefly goes ballistic and stand up to Legrain.
- Homoerotic Subtext: Taking into account all the antics Félicien Mézeray has been getting up to in his attempts to get in Legrain's good graces — which include a boxing match that turns into a sort of dance and ice-skating together while holding hands — and how Félicien Mézeray practically elopes to get out from under his wife and rejoin Legrain immediately after the Mistaken for Gay conversation, it does not actually seem all that far-fetched to interpret his "No, it's a man!" as a genuine coming-out moment, perhaps even to himself.
- The Hyena: Mézeray's wife tends to burst into fits of hysterical laughter for seemingly no reason. Oddly, she is the sane one in their couple.
- Hypocrite: Legrain often calls Mézeray "crazy", but he's really no better than him in that regard.
- Manchild: Both Mézeray and Legrain can be very childish at times, especially when they are together. The scene were they taunt the castle looters after trapping them in the old castle's dungeon really stands out.
- Manipulative Bastard: Félicien Mézeray tries to trick two Americans representatives into buying the Modigliani tattoo from Legrain's back without his consent for 500 millions: however, he need the old man's signature to seal the deal. He manages to do it at the cost of rebuilding his old castle but even then, he bribes the stonemason to accelerate the work and doing a shoddy work.Mézeray: To have the Modigliani, you have to buy all of these [a bunch of worthless paintings] 150 millions.
[when the Americans refuses, he walks up to his phone and try to call their rivals] So? [he even manages to raise up to 180 millions] - Mistaken for Gay: Félicien Mézeray is accused by his wife of seeing another woman (while in truth, he's spending time with Legrain). After lots of denial, he blurts out "No, it's a man!", to the wife's (and eavesdropping butler's) shock.
- Nice to the Waiter: Legrain may be a short-tempered old grouch (and a nobleman by birth), but he's shown to be very polite and friendly towards Lucien, the young mailman from his home village.
- Odd Friendship: Mézeray and Legrain, by the end of the movie.
- Psychopathic Manchild: Mézeray takes way too much pleasure in terrorizing the castle looters with the submachine gun Legrain gave him, even gleefully asking him if "they're all dead yet" when they cease shooting at the poor bastards.Mézeray: [after nearly riddling the looters with bullets] YEAH! NOW THIS IS FUN!!
- Racist Grandpa: At one point, a furious Legrain tells Mézeray's (black) butler to back off, calling him a "gorilla" in the process. Mézeray seems to have some prejudice towards his butler too, but never actually insults him to his face.
- Uncle Tomfoolery: The Black butler of the Mézerays indulges a bit (although French movies had different standards at the time), but overall he comes off just as much as a Servile Snarker.
