The movie The Fifth Element (1997) is one of my all-time favorites. It’s wildly creative and entertaining. I recently saw an HD version of the movie for the first time and was reminded of how much I like the film.

There are all kinds of fan sites for The Fifth Element, and a couple of my friends even saw a barista at a Starbuck’s in Portland who had a tattoo of the four elements (earth, air, fire, water) on her wrist, just like the girl/alien/perfect being Leeloo.

I wondered if the barista’s tattoo was exactly the same as the one in the movie. When going through the film, frame by frame, in several scenes Leeloo doesn’t even have the tattoo on her wrist (the makeup artists probably never figured people would examine the film in obsessive detail). But here’s a capture of a frame from the movie where the priest sees the tattoo on her right wrist and realizes she’s the fifth element that can save planet Earth:

So, if the tattoo was on your right wrist, from your perspective, there’s be six straight up-and-down lines of 10-12 dots in the lower left corner, two sets of six ess-shaped lines that go up-and-down (see image for the initial direction of the bend), and a set of ess-shaped lines that go left-to-right and that initially bend the other way from the other two sets of wavy lines.

Here’s an image someone drew for me of a very close approximation of the tattoo, if it was on your right wrist and you were looking at it:

So, if you want a tattoo from The Fifth Element on your wrist, and you want to get the orientation correct, make sure you bring an image to the tattoo person.