Léolo (1992)

Too much of everything

Sorry, this movie sucks

best movie i've ever seen.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

This is a very sad and sick movie. A review of professional critics and IMDb user comments and message board don't seem to address an obvious and obscene fact. According to the IMDb, the actor who played Leolo, Maxime Collin, was about 12 years old at the time of the filming. This child actor is involved in pedophilia (adults having sex with children) and bestiality (people having sex with animals) scenes. We see him masturbating himself, being masturbated by a women (actually she is masturbating two children), and apparently having sex with a cat. We can say that they are "just acting", but the reason pedophile behavior is wrong is because children are too young to know what is going on and in no position to say no to an adult.This movie reflects a film industry that encourages perverted and morally-reprehensible films, and an audience that just doesn't seem to care. Shame on the people who made this film, on the critics who thought it was so wonderful, on the governmental authorities who didn't prosecute the film makers, and on all of us who knowingly or unwittingly watched it.

A young boy whose birth father is a "contaminated tomato" from Italy he insists, rejects his family and escapes his meager existence into his own thoughts, shelterly painted on his diary. He longs for his paramour Bianca, believes his grandfather is the source of his family's little tragedies amongst other things, and insists of being called Léolo Lazone, instead of his French-Canadian name.This is an indescribable comedy, textured with bizarre characters and unusual observations from the narrator of this film, young Léolo. Witty, bizarre, and completely unique, this film takes some very strange turns along the way as we see how his family life effects him negatively to the point where he feels he doesn't belong anywhere near them. He holds on to what little proper sanity he has left by clutching his yearnings for Bianca. If he loses her, then perhaps the final life-string will be forever severed.This film is beautifully photographed, but despite it's centering around a child's thoughts and meanderings, this deals with very adult material. It can also be hard to watch, though at times the absurd black comedy, done completely straight, is brilliant and realistically accurate.

I have seen this movie on DVD, and I was a bit confused. I always thought that I am somehow intelligent and able to understand even complicated plots and thoughts, but this time, I failed. Or can it be that this movie is really not as good as so many people tell us? The story is weird, and I cannot believe that it is a proof of intellectual level that we see a young girl eating an old man's toenails, while a young boy watches her and "plays with himself". And also the rest of the story is only weird. Frankly speaking, this movie is also boring and did not touch me, at all. Everything only seems to give me the impression that the director wanted to talk about some severe problems that he might have had during his childhood!? If he wants, he should go to a psychiatrist. But he should not bore audience with his thoughts.

This is one of the few movies that left me mystified. Was it trying to create only mood (however unpleasant), was it trying to convey a deep message (however obscure), was it trying to show that there is squalor in modern Montreal (however unsurprising)? All of these? None of these? Why was this movie made?A boy is coming of age in a totally dysfunctional family. The parents are obsessed with bodily functions - the father checks the boy's output after each visit to the toilet; all five children are forced to take laxatives. If you see dark humor in this, then you may like this movie. I'm afraid the humor flew over my head.We see rats in the sink, rats in the bathtub. In one scene, that I assume is to have some special meaning, we see at some length a filthy turkey in the bathtub. What's the meaning of that? And what an inspiring thing it is to see a young boy having sex with a cat.I felt like taking a shower after watching this movie. The boy, Léolo, finds his family so difficult to deal with that he escapes into dreams, fantasy, and writing. Maybe understandably, most everyone in this family winds up going nuts or heading toward death. The music is a grab bag. There is a mixture of things like Tom Waits' "Cold Cold Ground," Tallis' "Spem in Allum," the Stones' "You can't always get what you want," and chanting.Much of the movie is told in a voice-over and sections of the novel "L'avalée des avallés" by the Canadian Réjean DuCharme are read - this is a book that Léolo is reading and it is the only book in his house. A recurring quote is, "Because I dream, I'm not." I think the idea behind that is that we dream to escape reality, but your guess is as good as mine.I have to give this movie credit for coming out of nowhere to give us something like we have never seen before, but that doesn't mean that we will like it. Sometimes there is a fine balance between art and pretension and, for me, this movie weighs in on the pretension side.