Tattoo: il segno della passione

Tattoo is very beautiful and stylish looking, as is Maud Adams. Below the cinematographic beauty is a core of exploitation.

Maud Adams is not a great actress, but she and her breasts have wonderful personality which comes through on screen. Bruce Dern, a very good actor, lends gravity to his performance and does much more justice to the screenplay than it deserves.

The story of Tattoo is pretty silly, the screenplay amateurish and many scenes are poorly executed. But despite it's many faults, I found Tattoo genuinely engrossing. The film is a visual delight and the music score meshes very nicely.

Be warned that Tattoo is psychologically as well as physically exploitative so sensitives should steer clear, though really it's very mild compared with some more recent flicks.

If you're a hetero guy, you'll love it. 6/10

My trusty Video Movie Guide 2001 dubbed this 'the most vile, reprehensible, sexist, and misogynistic piece of tripe ever released under the guise of a mainstream film.' Naturally, I went out and rented it right away. Frankly, I don't understand what the fuzz is all about. It's just another character study, albeit not a very good one: given their respective situation, both the kidnapper and his victim exhibit rather unbelievable behaviour. There are hints of both 'Psycho' and 'The Collector', but 'Tattoo' lacks the tension of the first and the insight in character of the latter. I understand the ending caused quite some commotion in it's time: I thought this was the strongest scene in the whole film. I won't give the ending away, let me just say the scene was at the same time erotic and disturbing

I had high hopes "Tattoo" would be a minor gem. The ingredients were there - Bruce Dern doing what he does best: playing a psycho, the superb Leonard Frey has a minor role, a script is by a Bunuel and the plot concerns the rarely explored world of tattoos. Yet what we get is soft porn, bad acting and a ridiculously pretentious ending. Okay, so Dern is great as the masturbating, obsessive tattoo artist but the casting of Maud Adams as the object of his obsession is incredibly off. Looking like someone who just crawled out of an airbrush-laden mid-seventies Playboy issue, Adams is about as attractive as drying paint, but not quite as talented.

The script is heavily misjudged also, constructed so we come to sympathize with Dern, yet halfway switches to having Adams the protagonist, which fails as attributed to her shallow and bitchy portrayal. And there is the film's major flaw, with no-one to sympathize with the film lacks the power and suspense it so desires. On the plus side it looks great, with wonderful cinematography which somehow even manages to evoke atmosphere from the proceedings on occasion. Also we get a cameo from a teenage Cynthia Nixon, Miranda from "Sex in the City", who impresses with what little screen time she has. "Tattoo" ends on a symbolic note which some may find profound, but most will see it for what it really is - turgid and pointless.

Rent "Magic" or "The Collector" instead.

One and a half out of four.

As a psychopathic tattoo artist, Bruce Dern has to work extra hard here, because the script is very sketchy as far as his motivations and background are concerned, but he is up to the task - he has some very creepy moments (like his first outburst at a dinner table). As his "object of desire", however, Maud Adams is fatally miscast: the way she plays the model in the first half of the movie, you just can't understand why anyone would become infatuated with her. This strange film might be worth a look if you can find it, but don't expect too much. (**)

This story makes has me thinking what makes a man so twisted that he becomes deeply obsessed with the woman he loves the most. (Academy Award Nominee Bruce Dern) portrays Karl Kinski a tattoo artist who develops a twisted obsession for a model that he desires the most. Maud Adams (also known as one of the bond girls who was in both The Man with Golden Gun and Octopussy) portrays Maddy, the model that Karl desires the most. This has received a little bit of controversy surrounding the issue of the poster the shows a woman to her ankles. There was also another rumor if whether the sex scene between Maud Adams and Bruce Dern was either real or just an illusion. I don't know how to rate this film, but the point of this film was that it that there are crazed obsessives who lurk among us. To be honest this was a good film.