Léolo

Foreign, French

Maxime Collin	Leo--"Leolo"
Ginette Reno	Mother
Roland Blouin	Father
Julien Guiomar	Grandfather
Pierre Bourgault	The Word Tamer
Giudetta Del Vecchio	Bianca
Andrée LaChapelle	Psychiatrist
Denys Arcand	Career Counselor
Germain Houde	Teacher
Lorne Brass	Fernand's Enemy
Gilbert Sicotte	Narrator
Giuditta Del Vecchio	Bianca
Yves Montmarquette	Fernand

Director	Jean-Claude Lauzon
Producer	Aimee Danis; Lyse Lafontaine
Writer	Jean Claude Lauzon

Jean-Claude Lauzon 's highly praised film tells the strange story of Leolo, a young boy from Montréal. Told from Leolo's point of view, the film depicts his family of lunatics and Leolo's attempts to deal with them. Not one individual in the boy's life is well adjusted. His brother, after being beaten up, spends the film bulking up on growth protein. The grandfather hires half-naked girls to bite off his toenails and, in a brutal rage, almost kills Leolo. As he witnesses his family decay around him, Leolo retreats into himself and the fantasy world he has constructed. In response to the weirdness of his daily life, Leolo creates a little mental mayhem of his own which Lauzon renders in an amazing series of free-form, surreal images. Eventually, this precarious balance of reality and fantasy cracks and Leolo is hospitalized after attempting to murder his grandfather. The score by Tom Waits underscores the narrative arc of Leolo's breakdown. On its release, the film won numerous awards including the International Fantasy Film Award for Best Director (1992) and a Genie Award for Best Original Screenplay (1992). — Brian Whitener