Léolo : ‘Because I dream, I am not.’
‘Parce que moi je rêve, je ne le suis pas.’
Directed by Jean-Claude Lauzon, Léolo(1992) tells the story of Léo Lauzon (played by Maxime Collin), a young boy living in Montreal with his eccentric family. The film is narrated by an old man reading Léo’s journal, which he used to write every night.
Léo uses his active fantasies and the book, L’avalée des avalés by Québécois novelist Réjean Ducharme, the only one in the house, left by the narrator to balance the dining table when Léo mother invited him for a piece of pie, to exorcise his mind of the tribulations of life in the family. Léo decides his mother was impregnated by leftover sperm of a masturbating Sicilian tomato farmer. He insists on being called Léolo Lauzone. Leolo’s parents, in particular, his father, believes daily bowel movement is necessary for good health and strives to ensure just that with laxatives. His elder brother Fernand spends his time bodybuilding after he is humiliated by a neighbourhood bully, only to be humiliated again. Two of his sisters are institutionalized, one of whom is soothed by the persistent drone of insects Leolo hides in the cellar. The oldest member of the family is Leolo’s grandfather, a sullen, dour man, who once tried to drown Leolo in a wading pool for spraying water on the old man; he pays Bianca, their Italian neighbour, and Leolo’s babysitter, to indulge in his senile fantasies. Leolo, who is smitten by Bianca, devises an elaborate system to murder the old man by hanging.
It’s hard to describe a film life this. The film is disturbing and yet makes compelling viewing. It is full of astonishing imagery: Leolo pleasuring himself in pork meat; Bianca chewing off the grandfather’s toenails; a neighbourhood kid screwing a cat for five dollars; the heavily muscled Fernand in tears when hit by the scrawny bully… But having read Lauzon’s own life story, the film is obviously influenced by his own upbringing.
Léolo was Jean-Claude Lauzon’s second and last film. He died while piloting his Cessna in northern Canada in 1997.
