The story begins in 1946 France.  Drioli is a maison-less guy (and that’s about it for my junior high school French).

He scavenges through the garbage cans of French restaurants.  Or as they call them in France, restaurants.  He is disgusted to find snails in the garbage can!  What has happened to my life!  How did those disgusting creatures get there!  Call Le Health Inspector!  The chef chases him away.

In the window of “the finest gallery in Paris” he sees a painting by his old friend Saltine Soutine. ^[1]

Drioli remembers his friend back in 1913.  Oddly enough, he remembers a conversation he was not present at between Soutine and his model Josie.  No matter, Drioli shows up soon 30 years younger, cleaner, and probably smelling better.  Although, this is France so that’s not a given.

Drioli is happy because he just made a big art sale himself.  Nine, in fact!  Soutine mocks him because he is a tattoo artist.

We learn that Josie is Drioli’s wife.  You’d never know it the way she and Soutine are all over each other.  Dioli even suggests his friend should paint his wife nude.

Josie will have none of this.  She is a nice Christian girl. The two drunken men crudely chase her around the apartment.  The prim and proper Josie flees in horror. She is disgusted by their boorish behavior.  To even think a lovely girl like her would — oh dear, she’s whipped her tits out.

And not it’s not cheap, cropped American broadcast TV nudity.  They actually show one full breast.  She has one of Drioli’s tattoos — a butterfly — above her nipple.  Soutine goes in close for a look because who wouldn’t?  However, he also starts sucking her nipple.

This gives Drioli an idea, and somehow it’s not braining Soutine with a stale baguette.  He wants a picture of Josie that he will always have with him (but will never get to see?).  He asks Soutine to tattoo a picture of Josie on his back.  Drioli goes to get his tattooing tools.  Soutine and Josie start kissing when he leaves.

When Drioli returns, somehow Josie has gone to the hair salon in those 15 minutes and now has crimps in her hair.  Or maybe Soutine just gave her an awesome rogering while her husband was gone.  She poses, and Soutine starts painting the portrait of her.  After an intense session, Soutine finishes on Drioli’s back — coincidentally just as he did earlier to Josie.  Once the painting is done, he tattoos over it. He is so proud of his effort that he signs his name on it, also coincidentally as he did earlier to Josie.

Back in the present (i.e. 1946), the filthy, disheveled rue-person Drioli goes into the gallery to see Soutine’s work.  The hoity-toity art snobs look at him in disgust like he was Norman Rockwell.

As the elite crowd looks on in distaste, the gallery owner hustles him to the door.  He strips and shows the crowd his back, which would have been my reaction, too.   Oh wait, He’s showing them the tattoo.  Drioli says Soutine was his friend and he has a picture by him.

The owner offers Drioli 200,000 francs for the picture.  He will have the finest surgeon in France remove it, and bill it as a carbuncle.  Another man says that would kill Drioli.  However, this man offers him a life of luxury.  He just has to hang out by the pool at the Hotel Bristol in Cannes with his shirt off and keep his back shaved so she doesn’t have hairy ‘pits.

Drioli walks out with the man.  Eighteen months later, the tattoo is in the window of a gallery in Buenos Aires.  A voice-over tells us there is no Hotel Bristol in Cannes.

As usual with TOTU, I was bored by the first viewing.  Going back to fill in some notes, I kind of liked it.  The accents were a challenge since it was full of foreigners, which of course is what did in your League of Nations. ^[2] But I got used to the French and Russian accents.  Lucy Gutteridge of the vastly underrated Top Secret! is the only performer who really stands out.  Coincidentally, also the only topless woman.

Other Stuff:

• [1]  The painting shown was actually painted by an artist named Chaim Soutine.  Painted in 1925, it is entitled View of Cagnes.  Oh yeah . . . and it is dreadful.
• [2]  Major Frank Burns circa 1951.
• Lucy Gutteridge was last seen on The Hitcher.
• IMDb says she now lives on the Isle of Wight.  More like Isle of Lucy.