Le Mozart des pickpockets is a 2006 short film (31 minutes) from France, directed by Philippe Pollet-Villard.
Philippe and Richard are two men in late middle-age, and also petty criminals. They are part of a pickpocketing ring that runs a little scam. One of the ring goes into a crowd of people and starts sticking his hand in pockets or purses until he's noticed. Philippe and Richard then swoop in, pretending to be cops (complete with fake ID), and "arrest" the suspect, and while everyone's attention is distracted, their confederates do the real pickpocketing.
One afternoon the scam goes wrong when real cops pop up and arrest the pickpocket. Philippe and Richard run for it, and they are joined by a little boy of unknown origin—he came out of the crowd of people, but Phillipe and Richard don't know who he belongs to and never find out, because he is a deaf/mute. They try to shoo the boy away after making it clear of the cops, but he refuses to stop following them. Eventually they informally adopt him, and train him to be a pint-sized pickpocket.
Tropes:
- And the Adventure Continues: Philippe and Richard get arrested at the bowling alley, and the cops collect the boy too. All three of them are in a police wagon going to headquarters, Philippe and Richard in handcuffs. The boy smiles at his patrons, and shows Philippe and Richard that he has stolen a handcuff key. Philippe and Richard smile back at him, and the films ends.
- Answer Cut: Richard is trying to convince Philippe that they should take the boy home. Philippe says that, even if they decide to take the boy back to their flophouse hotel, how will they get him past the desk clerk? Cut to the two men stuffing the boy into a valise.
- Bait-and-Switch: Philippe and Richard jump into a crowd and arrest a pickpocket, and the viewer thinks they're cops. Moments later Richard is plucking a wallet out of a woman's purse and it's revealed what they really are.
- Cute Mute: The deaf/mute boy, who cannot talk but still manages to win the hearts of Philippe and Richard.
- The Fagin: Two, in the persons of Philippe and Richard, who wind up adopting a small boy and then train him to be a pickpocket.
- Heartwarming Orphan: The boy, who is small and cute and has a wide-eyed endearing stare, and certainly seems to be an orphan as he makes no effort to find any parental figures, instead attaching himself to Philippe and Richard.
- Idiot Ball: Philippe has already gotten busted at the bowling alley, when he flashed a fake police badge to some bowlers who turn out to be real police. The real cops demand ID from Richard, who busts out his own fake police badge and identifies himself as Internal Affairs. They are both arrested. (And the the French for Internal Affairs apparently translates out to "police of police.")
- Impersonating an Officer: Philippe and Richard have fake cop badges and do this routinely as part of a scam. It bites them in the butt when Philippe does this in a bowling alley to intimidate some people, only to find out that the people he is talking to are real cops.
- No Name Given: He's a child so he doesn't have ID, he's mute, and he never writes down his name. In the credits the boy is called "L'enfant" ("the child").
- Tattooed Crook: Richard and Philippe have, respectively, an octopus and a tiger tattooed on their left forearms. They both show the boy in an effort to scare him away, which fails utterly.
- Time-Passes Montage: A montage towards the end shows the gang committing various robberies at movie theaters. Philippe and Richard wait outside. The boy eventually comes out with whatever he took from ladies' purses, and then the three of them run like hell.
- Title Drop: The trio gets a whole new idea for crime when Richard takes the boy to the movies. The boy, being small, crawls around under all the seats and picks from the purses that the women in the audience leave on the floor. After the boy shows them the haul he got from the movie theater, a delighted Philippe calls him "Le Mozart des pickpockets!"
- Unreliable Voiceover: Philippe gets the idea for a pickpocketing scheme. Basically, he will pretend to drop a pack of cigarettes right in front of a random tourist, he will bump into the tourist, Richard will intercede, and in the confusion the boy will take the wallet. As Philippe explains this plan to the other two, we see it play out in real life—everything goes fine until Richard hands the tourist's wallet to the boy, who proceeds to hand it right back to the tourist. Philippe gets a punch in the nose.
