Léolo

Léolo is a film Québécois realized by Jean-Claude Lauzon, left in 1992, and partially based on Swallowed swallowed of Réjean Ducharme. In 2005, the magazine Time declared Léolo one of 100 best films of all times.

Synopsis

Léo Lauzon, young Montréalais alive within a dysfonctionnelle family, lives in the imaginary one to escape reality. He believes to discover that his/her mother was not put pregnant by her father, but by an Italian tomato. Léo then becomes Léolo, ready with fantasmer on its Bianca neighbor.

Data sheet

Title: Léolo
Realization: Jean-Claude Lauzon
Scenario: Jean-Claude Lauzon
Production: Aimee Danis
Music:
Photography: Guy Dufaux
Assembly: Michel Arcand
Decorations: Frances Calder and Andre Chamberland
Costumes: François Barbel
Country of origin: Canada
Format: Colors - 1,66:1 - Dolby DIGITAL - 35 mm
Kind: Drama
Lasted: 107 minutes
Coming out date: 1992
Film prohibited with less than 16 years at the time of its exit in France

Distribution

Gilbert Sicotte: Narateur (voice)
Maxime Hake: Léolo
Ginette Reno : Mother
Julien Guiomar: Grandfather

Quotations

Everyone believes that I am a French Canadian.

Because me I dream, me I am not it. Because me I dream, me I am not it.

People who do not believe that with their truth call me Léo Lauzon. One says of him that he is my father, but me I know that I am not his son because this man is insane and that I am not it.

Because me I dream, me I am not it. Because me I dream, me I am not it.

----

Léolo! Léolo Lauzonne! I am called Léolo!

----

Also far I remember, in fact the odors and the light welded my first memories…

----

My family was like the characters of a fiction, I spoke about it like foreigners. Seldom, it sometimes happened to us to be all at the house and there, there was the air of a true family…

----

Never again Fernand will be afraid of anybody. And when my brother is a mountain, me also I will not be any more afraid. And I will say to droppings of this ground in all the lanes of the world what I think of them. Misfortune with those which will not lean the head on our passage, even the Arabs and the Jews will be afraid of me so much I will be high, upright on the shoulders of my brother.

----

My mother made us gift of a beautiful plastic pink. She must brighten the room, because a flower is an image, or rather, an idea of nature. Its scarlet red is choked by the dust which buries it more and more at each day. So at least somebody of the family could realize that this flower lacks naturalness, with his small gilded label “Made in HongKong” stuck under a petal. However, it would be enough to a small gesture without efforts of my share, to take off this label and to start to accept this illusion, but I refuse to touch there. I do not want to take my place in this cemetery of thealive ones. And here are that my toes recall me that I am there, they leave a small hole at the end of my cover. From day in day, without me to see some, I succeeded in passing a toe moreover than the day before. Tomorrow it will be my whole foot, and then my leg, soon my body will pass there. I feel already that I must leave this life before strangling myself with this hole…

----

And this day there, I understood that the fear lived with deepest of ourself and that a mountain of muscles or a thousand of soldiers could nothing change there.

----

This night, Ti-Guy Godin will return late. His/her mother will examine the fingers to him. She really worries with knowing if Ti-Guy smokes in hiding-place. Not Mrs Godin, your son threads all that moves, it with the washing bottle devoured by the bacteria, it swallows all the pills which it finds to forget you, Sunday when you to oblige it to take his bath to go to the church it benefits from it for prostituer with his coach from hockey: the white meat is sold better, but especially you do not worry, it does not smoke, it chokes yourselves with all blows.

The bottom, I discovered it between ignorance and the horror. With deepest of ourselves, one knew all that the money was only one pretext and that it would do it in any event, but the set of our challenge hid the anguish of the fear. The poor she-cat was not defended, it did not have any more claws, Mrs Ouimet took care of her curtains. Ah! which chance for you pussy, Godin Ti-Bottom did not have Tintin like neighbor… ----

Rewards

Price Genius (Canada): Better original screenplay, Better assembly, Better costume
International Toronto Film Festival: Better Canadian film
International Vancouver Film Festival: Better Canadian scenario

External bond

Léolo on Internet Movie Database
Time magazine Selection among 100 best films of all times (English)

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