Léolo (1992)

Synopsis

Léolo is a 1992 film by Quebecois director Jean-Claude Lauzon.

Through poetic words and a vivid imagination that we come to appreciate in the sophisticated narration, a boy dreams away the grinding poverty and emotional traumas of his life in a Montreal tenement slum.

Montreal's best known enfant terrible, writer-director Jean-Claude Lauzon, creates a visionary yet profoundly disturbing masterpiece about a young boy's rites-of-passage into adult life. 



Lyricism and poetry sit cheek-to-jowl with images of misery, madness and perversion in a controversial merging of the sacred and the profane.

Lauzon occasionally has gutter sensibilities - the notorious sex with a cat scene - but he creates a parallel universe for the boy that is staggeringly beautiful. 

In the end, this is an extraordinarily personal film that speaks to Lauzon's own vision of the world, his world. -- https://www.www.canoe.ca/

Cast: Maxime Collin, Ginette Reno, Denys Arcand, Pierre Bourgault, Julien Guiomar, Giuditta Del Vecchio

Cannes (In Competition), Toronto (Opening Night): Best Canadian Feature Film - Special Jury Citation, New York

Jean-Claude Lauzon’s highly praised film tells the strange story of Léolo, a young boy from Montréal. Told from Léolo’s point-of-view, the film depicts his family of lunatics and Léolo’s attempts to deal with them.

Not one individual in the boy’s life is well adjusted. His brother, after being beaten up, spends the film bulking up on growth protein. The grandfather hires half-naked girls to bite off his toenails and, in a brutal rage, almost kills Léolo.

As he witnesses his family decay around him, Léolo retreats into himself and the fantasy world he has constructed. In response to the weirdness of his daily life, Léolo creates a little mental mayhem of his own which Lauzon renders in an amazing series of free-form, surreal images.

Eventually, this precarious balance of reality and fantasy cracks and Léolo is hospitalized after attempting to murder his grandfather. The score by Tom Waits underscores the narrative arc of Léolo’s breakdown.

On its release, the film won numerous awards including the International Fantasy Film Award for Best Director (1992) and a Genie Award for Best Original Screenplay (1992). -- allmovie guide

Read about this film

Country: Canada | France
Language: French
Color: Color
Runtime: 107 min.