Leolo DVD Review

Léolo, out on September 29, 2008 is a film about a young boy who is growing up in a backstreet Canadian home, where his unusual family life allows him to explore his dreams.

Filmed on location in East Montreal, the Canadian backdrop provides beautiful scenary for a simply hypnotic film. The young boy, Leo Lauzon is extremely unhappy, caught in a pendulum between his severely dysfunctional and crazy family and the world of fantasy he concocts for himself through his writings. In fact, the whole family are pretty much insane, apart from Leo's mother - who manages to rise above it all. The boundaries of his existance continually intertwice, as even in his writing, Leo is Léolo Lozone - the son of a Sicilian peasant - and that came about through an act involving a tomato!

The film highlights Léolo's development most importantly his sexual development where he begins to notice Montreal's abundance of women. However, Léolo only has eyes fo one woman, Bianca. Bianca develops into an obsession; the beautiful but remote Italian neighbour; Léolo's first love. As Léolo increasingly plummets into insanity, his equilibrium is found in his imagination, in the ancient theatre at Taormina, where Bianca is waiting for him.

Léolo stars Maxime Collin, Ginette Reno and Denys Arcand and will surely have you hypnotised with its ambient soundtrack featuring The Rolling Stones and Tom Waits.

Léolo is the second feature film by award-winning French-Canadian screenwriter and director Jean-Claude Lauzon who died in 1997. Nominated for a prestigious Golden Palm at Cannes, the film has won numerous awards, including Best Canadian Feature Film at the Toronto Film Festival and Best Screenplay at Vancouver International Film Festival. Originally filmed in 1992, Léolo is available 16 years later on DVD from Network DVD in time for October. We give it 4 out of 5 stars.

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