Léolo (1992)

User Rating:

7.3/10   

Director:

Jean-Claude Lauzon

Writer:

Jean-Claude Lauzon (writer)

Release Date:

2 April 1993 (USA)

Genre:

Comedy | Drama

Plot:

Young Leo Lauzon is torn between two worlds - the squalid Montreal tenement that he inhabits with his...

Plot Keywords:

Tomato | Bizarre | Male Nudity | Dysfunctional Family | Urination

Awards:

8 wins & 8 nominations

Cast

Gilbert Sicotte	...	Narrator (voice)
Maxime Collin	...	Leolo
Ginette Reno	...	Mother
Julien Guiomar	...	Grandfather
Pierre Bourgault	...	Word Tamer
Giuditta Del Vecchio	...	Bianca
Andrée Lachapelle	...	Psychiatrist
Denys Arcand	...	Director
Germain Houde	...	Teacher
Yves Montmarquette	...	Fernand
Lorne Brass	...	Fernand's Enemy
Roland Blouin	...	Father
Geneviève Samson	...	Rita
Marie-Hélène Montpetit	...	Nanette
Francis St-Onge	...	Leolo, age 6

Runtime:

107 min

Country:

France | Canada

Language:

French

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.66 : 1

Sound Mix:

Dolby

Certification:

Australia:M | Iceland:16 | Canada:13+ (Quebec) | South Korea:18 | Finland:K-16 | France:-16 | Germany:16 | Spain:18 | Sweden:15

Filming Locations:

Italy

Company:

Alliance Films Corporation

Trivia:

The book which appears in the movie is "L'avalée des avalés" (translated as "Swallow of the Swallowed") by Canadian writer Réjean Ducharme.

Quotes:

Narrator: Because I dream, I am not.

Movie Connections:

Featured in Weird Sex and Snowshoes: A Trek Through the Canadian Cinematic Psyche (2004) (TV)

Soundtrack:

Cold Cold Ground

Brilliant and genuinely original.

I absolutely adore this movie.

I first saw it with a group of friends at the local college town art cinema when it was first released. When it ended, hardly anyone in the theater even stirred, slowly and quietly rising only after the credits ran out. Afterwards, we went for drinks, as had been the plan for the evening, but it took a long time for us to break out of the film's spell and begin to really talk. When we finally did, each of us was relieved to find that everyone else had been as moved by it as each had individually.

The reason for all this doubt and anxiety, I believe, is the film itself. It doesn't rely on any conventions at all, nor does it allow the viewer to respond via convention. What it does do is provide the viewer with an intensely private view of the characters. You get to see them in broad daylight at times and on occasions where one would most want to be absolutely alone. Because of this willingness to really expose its characters, a more honest self-relation is demanded in response and for a response. (In this respect in reminds me a bit of Milan Kundera's novels, during the reading of which I often find myself embarrassed for the characters that I am there intruding on their privacy.) I think what myself and my friends (then still young adults) feared was revealing something about ourselves--a kind of fragility and ambivalence in one's own self-relation that one normally represses, but which this film repeatedly draws to the surface. Wouldn't admitting that one was moved by these characters be also an admission that one could relate to them in some more profound way? Yes, and I have felt just a little bit less alone in the world since seeing Leolo. Not better perhaps, but less alone.

A truly great, great movie. Rent it on VHS, grab a Canadian DVD off of Ebay, or pester IFC to show it again (record it because you'll want to see it again), but don't miss it.