Leolo

The Canadian cinema has long been plagued by an identity problem. It lives in the shadow of its big brother to the south — Hollywood — and rarely succeeds in breaking away from the dominance of the Los Angeles dream factories. Too often, the English language cinema in Canada ends up being a haven for tax-shelter productions and skid-row genre flicks.

But the French-Canadian cinema has a very different — and more dynamic — legacy. Strangely enough, however, the French-Canadian cinema is fueled by an even more massive identity crisis. The intense cultural and linguistic isolation of the French-Canadians is just one of several dozen reference points that lurk deep
beneath the surface of Leolo. In its invocation of childhood memories,  Leolo bears a misleading resemblance to Fellini, but its spirit is more bitter, and its memories are painfully absurd and brilliantly
nightmarish. Leolo rejects nostalgia. Instead, it offers a descent into the genuinely schizophrenic realms of the imagination.

Leolo is a 12-year-old boy growing up in a poverty-ridden section of Montreal at the start of the 1960s. His real name is Leo, but he insists upon using an Italianized version. A dream convinced him that his real father
is a Sicilian who masturbated on a crate of tomatoes that were then shipped to Montreal, where they impregnated his mother. This dream of Sicily is Leolo's hallucinatory escape from his grotesque family. His mother is obsessed with bowel movements, handing out laxatives as if they were communion wafers. His dull-witted older brother has pumped himself up into a muscle-bound figure of verbal rage. One sister
is totally passive. The other is only happy when she reigns over her realm of insects.

Then there is grandfather, who tries to kill Leolo. Grandfather is mad. But then, so is the whole family. They are routinely institutionalized.

At the narrative level, the film's excessive levels of alienation play like a bad Freudian joke. But visually, Leolo turns Jungian: the savage and extremely disturbing subject matter is repeatedly offset by images of
unique — even haunting — beauty. There is a mythic quality to Leolo's flawed attempt at establishing his fictional identity. The story is almost an insane ramble, but the visuals connect at an authentic and highly
charged surrealistic level.

Leolo was directed by Jean-Claude Lauzon, a young director whose work has already been the center of much controversy. His only other feature is the oddball thriller Night Zoo. Appropriately, Leolo has something in it to offend almost everyone.

It also has a sense of humanity that is rich, deep and real.