Howard Schumann Jean-Claude Lauzon's semi-autobiographical Leolo, the last film he made before his death in a plane crash in 1995, is a powerful and unique masterpiece that, for me, will never grow old. Dramatizing the thin line between art and madness, Leolo is one of the most unique films ever made: vulgar, audacious, imaginative, disturbing, yet deeply compassionate. Though Leolo feels very personal to me, it is a film made for every outsider whose environment is so devoid of the things that nurture their souls, that, to survive, they must escape into a world of dreams, surviving only by being a spectator to their own life.12-year-old Leolo (Maxime Collin) lives in a squalid tenement in Montreal, Canada, yet to him, he is no longer Leo Lozeau but an expatriate Sicilian named Leolo Lozone. Blaming his grandfather for infecting everyone with his errant genes, the boy lives in a home where insanity rules, affecting most of his family, except for his mother (Ginette Reno). He describes his world as "strange, harrowing, stinking, with no friends and no light." His father, a rotund sweaty man who has the warmth of a night patrolman, slinks around the house obsessed with everyone's toilet habits, making sure that everyone visits the bathroom at least once a day. Dreaming of his neighbor Bianca, a few years older than him, he navigates between his adolescent urges and the reality of his sordid existence, surviving only by resting his head "between two worlds, in the valley of the vanquished." He reads in the basement with only the light from a half-opened refrigerator door and writes in his journal whenever he can, finding his "only real joy in solitude. Solitude is his castle." When his brother is beaten up twice by the same thug, even though he has put on an enormous amount of muscle, Leolo notes that "fear lives in the deepest part of our being, no matter our outward appearance." His cry "Because I dream, I am not" enters our heart and buries itself until it is our own, a cry from the depths of our being. Filled with stunning bursts of poetry and a gorgeous eclectic soundtrack, Leolo is a touching, yet heartbreaking experience. For those who know what it means to grow up alone, at odds with the world around you, Leolo will make you feel that you have found a kindred spirit.

Perception_de_Ambiguity One big idea of the movie is how when Léolo discovers his sexuality everything changes for him. He describes how he loses interest in and even forgets the things he learned at school. Also the narrative reflects this, in the parts in which Léolo is younger, I'm guessing his age at seven, his reality is a different, less nihilistic one. It's also reflected in the depiction of his siblings. Then they were regular kids, now they are all prime nuthouse material, and also look completely different and simply degenerated. Even his brother is too strong to even walk properly and don't even get me started on his brain.I think in general 'Léolo' shows the parts of childhood that usually aren't spoken about, and are especially rarely seen in film. It tells stories of maximum perversity that still can concern a healthy child, I don't think we are dealing with a demented individual per se.The film isn't just pulp, which it could be seen as because of the extreme material that, no doubt is supposed to shock, but there are a lot of moments and observations that ring true, like for example crazy, irrational ideas that somehow run in a family and which the children are forced to live by. I'm of course talking about the "one sh!t a day keeps the doctor away" scene, which is just an extreme example of a situation that we probably all know. Or how about the "Queen Rita" business; Léolo's sister who has a stable enough mind under sick conditions (living underground as the queen of insects), yet without those conditions her mind can't take it anymore and it's her that is sick.Another moment that comes to mind which hit home with me was when Léolo's mother kills insects in a jar by filling up the glass with hot water. It's exactly what my mother would have done. And such a pointless endeavor it is, isn't it? Why not just throw it away somewhere? Why personally kill them all like that? Léolo cries over the dead insects as if a world broke down for him. "If life - any life - can be destroyed so easily and so pointlessly, then why not my own life too? If their life didn't matter then why does any life matter, why does anything matter? After all, those insects once existed and lived in this world, just like I do." Could thoughts like those go through a boy's mind as he's crying over the insect victims of his mother? "Because I dream, I am not." is a sentence often repeated in the film. After a while I understood what Léolo meant. In one scene Léolo even specifically says: "I was a spectator of my own life." He "is not", he doesn't exist, because his mind revolves more around his imagination. If the world around you doesn't affect your thinking, and your actions don't reflect the world around you, then you might as well be a living brain in a jar which only dreams. Depending on the way you look at it "Because I dream, I am not" can be a very nihilistic attitude because it denigrates dreaming, but it can also be a powerful and useful one to motivate you to get your ass up and do something. The question is which one is it in the case of Léolo's character? Knowingly or unknowingly the film gives off the impression that Léolo blames his bleak environment for his inevitable escape into Imaginationland™.I remember how much I laughed and how often I was positively shocked of disgust when I saw the film the first time, often having both things occur at the same time. Two things I distinctively remembered about 'Léolo' from back then > Léolo's brother who bulked up after he was beaten up by a stronger kid, and the liver humping.Arguable flaws of the film are a narrative that doesn't head towards anything, rather it is a collection of episodes in the life of a boy, and it's a bit muddled in its vision, I felt.The last impression with which I left the film? In the end all that is left of a human being, at best, is a story that is told and remembered for a moment in time. Literature or any kind of art that people leave behind is there to make the living dream, to make their lives more worthwhile through the act of making dreams come to life. So the dead as well as the living profit from such a piece of art left behind. And a story such as Léolo's we all have in us. If we dare to tell it it is the last part of us that survives.

DanKIT21 Other users seem to have enjoyed this film, but I thought it was revolting. Who wants to watch a movie where a kid puts raw meat in the bathtub, then slides it into his underwear, and has an orgasm with it? Oh and then his family eats the meat for dinner. Okay, fine so it's a human interest story about a kid growing up in a highly dysfunctional family... but the narrator doesn't seem to be any less dysfunctional than his relatives.To make things even more interesting, Leolo's family believes that in order to avoid disease in their impoverished surroundings, one must "shit" all the time, so Leolo grows up taking daily laxative shock treatments. His parents even check to make sure he has had a good BM or they sit in the same room with him while he excretes.Can I just say that I don't understand why ANYONE would want to watch this movie? The only reason I did is that my dad had rented it and said it was "about a boy growing up." Sounds harmless, right? The director could have included a few of the bathroom scenes at the beginning of the movie to give viewers a sense of how this poor kid grew up, but it was unnecessary to interrogate people with these preverted images.

alvarez8621 OK I saw this film in my Canadian Film class last week and I thought it was horrible! I am a very open minded person when it comes to movies, but I don't know what to do with this one. Leolo was disturbing and the end made little to no sense. There are characters added at the end who have no need being there, no is the end explained well. I was told it was a beautiful little film prior to seeing it, but I saw no beauty, I only saw an obsession with feces and other bodily functions. I was revolted and by the end was terribly disappointed and unfulfilled. It was the worst film by far that was screened in the class and I will never get one image/sound out of my head for a long time. That scene with the cat is the most useless and out of place scene I have ever been witness to, not to mention the most disturbing. I give Leolo a 2 out of 10.