Friday, April 08, 2005
Reviews of Léolo
Wendy's Review:
“Because I dream, I’m not.”
That is the defining theme of Léolo. Léolo is a movie about a boy named Léolo who is unhappy with what he is. He doesn’t like his father. In fact he thinks that his father is crazy. So crazy that there could be no way that he could be related. Hence that is why he now calls himself Léolo. He used to be Leo. Then he came up with a story of his Italian ancestry. Now he is Léolo, and that crazy man is no longer his father. He is also unhappy for where his life is headed. And he is unhappy with the fact that he is French Canadian. Again, another reason for Léolo’s Italian heritage story.
Léolo is a young boy in a dysfunctional family. Léolo dreams. His dreams help to get him out of his real life. His dreams help to get him through the day. The whole movie switches back and forth between his reality and his dreams. Eventually you just get to a point where you just accept it all. You accept everything he is telling you. Not only does it make the movie more enjoyable, but it’s fun to dream.
Léolo doesn’t like his life. He spends every waking moment either dreaming and/or writing in his journal. He writes a lot. He writes really well for a young boy. His family thinks he is wasting his time. However, this is a family who owns only one book. His teacher thinks he wasting his time writing. He lives in an industrial town. People there don’t write. They go to trade school. But Léolo is not like everyone else. “Because I dream, I’m not.”
Léolo is an amazingly visual movie. I have never seen anything like it before in my life. Léolo isn’t a movie for everybody though. There are very touching and very hilarious parts, but there are also very dark and horrifying parts. During Léolo some very weird and unsettling things happen. However, this movie is unforgettable. There is also some wonderful acting in Léolo done by Maxime Collin in the title role. He does a wonderful job in a role that was perhaps a little too adult for him. It is a very memorable role, and it is a shame that he has done nothing since. Léolo should be seen by anybody who appreciates a good film, and definitely by anybody who is a fan of the cinema.
Darrell's Review
Léolo was a movie I discovered by accident: a fit of insomnia one night found me flipping channels, and I wound up at IFC, watching a foreign film I’d never heard of. It was the story of a young boy who escapes his unhappy childhood into a dream world so strange and compelling that I couldn’t turn the television off or change channels. By the time I finished Léolo, I knew I’d seen a movie unlike anything I’d ever seen before.
Léolo is a remarkable film, and it’s brilliance makes it all the sadder that the writer and director, Jean-Claude Lauzon, died in a plane crash in ‘97 while preparing for his next film. His approach may have been similar to that of Terry Gilliam or Tim Burton, but if Léolo is any indication, Lauzon had a fearlessness and a warped visual style that would have left Burton and Gilliam in the dust with just a few more films.
Léolo's story is mad; it’s visual style hallucinatory, unsettling, upsetting, and hilarious. It’s hard to shake some of the images from your mind once you’ve seen the film: A filthy, insane-looking turkey stares at a crying child from inside an ancient, dirty bathtub. An unhappy, overweight girl reigns as Queen Rita among the insects and lizards held prisoner under a house. One image in particular, that of a young boy swimming and looking for treasure in a flooded junkyard, is beautiful, grotesque, and haunting. Lauzon’s filmed visions are really something to behold.
The movie careens wildly between scenes of hilarious comedy and scenes of perverse violence and tragedy, and it left me with my head spinning. One scene toward the end in particular, involving the unspeakable abuse of a cat, seemed gratuitous. It was, however, the only scene in the movie that actually jarred me back to reality, reminding me that I am a movie viewer, and that I was watching a movie. I’m sure, though, that Lauzon had a reason for the inclusion of that scene, if only to drive home once more the horrible reality of the world that Leolo lives in. His dream world becomes all the more important during that scene, and I understood better why Leolo escaped to it so frequently.
Léolo is not a film for everyone. When I say it’s upsetting and unsettling, I mean just that. It is, however, a great movie for anyone looking for something new, something different, something totally unlike anything you’ve seen before. Like Leolo’s dreams, Jean-Claude Lauzon’s last film was derivative of nothing.
¶ 7:44 PM
Wendy's Review:
“Because I dream, I’m not.”
That is the defining theme of Léolo. Léolo is a movie about a boy named Léolo who is unhappy with what he is. He doesn’t like his father. In fact he thinks that his father is crazy. So crazy that there could be no way that he could be related. Hence that is why he now calls himself Léolo. He used to be Leo. Then he came up with a story of his Italian ancestry. Now he is Léolo, and that crazy man is no longer his father. He is also unhappy for where his life is headed. And he is unhappy with the fact that he is French Canadian. Again, another reason for Léolo’s Italian heritage story.
Léolo is a young boy in a dysfunctional family. Léolo dreams. His dreams help to get him out of his real life. His dreams help to get him through the day. The whole movie switches back and forth between his reality and his dreams. Eventually you just get to a point where you just accept it all. You accept everything he is telling you. Not only does it make the movie more enjoyable, but it’s fun to dream.
Léolo doesn’t like his life. He spends every waking moment either dreaming and/or writing in his journal. He writes a lot. He writes really well for a young boy. His family thinks he is wasting his time. However, this is a family who owns only one book. His teacher thinks he wasting his time writing. He lives in an industrial town. People there don’t write. They go to trade school. But Léolo is not like everyone else. “Because I dream, I’m not.”
Léolo is an amazingly visual movie. I have never seen anything like it before in my life. Léolo isn’t a movie for everybody though. There are very touching and very hilarious parts, but there are also very dark and horrifying parts. During Léolo some very weird and unsettling things happen. However, this movie is unforgettable. There is also some wonderful acting in Léolo done by Maxime Collin in the title role. He does a wonderful job in a role that was perhaps a little too adult for him. It is a very memorable role, and it is a shame that he has done nothing since. Léolo should be seen by anybody who appreciates a good film, and definitely by anybody who is a fan of the cinema.
Darrell's Review
Léolo was a movie I discovered by accident: a fit of insomnia one night found me flipping channels, and I wound up at IFC, watching a foreign film I’d never heard of. It was the story of a young boy who escapes his unhappy childhood into a dream world so strange and compelling that I couldn’t turn the television off or change channels. By the time I finished Léolo, I knew I’d seen a movie unlike anything I’d ever seen before.
Léolo is a remarkable film, and it’s brilliance makes it all the sadder that the writer and director, Jean-Claude Lauzon, died in a plane crash in ‘97 while preparing for his next film. His approach may have been similar to that of Terry Gilliam or Tim Burton, but if Léolo is any indication, Lauzon had a fearlessness and a warped visual style that would have left Burton and Gilliam in the dust with just a few more films.
Léolo's story is mad; it’s visual style hallucinatory, unsettling, upsetting, and hilarious. It’s hard to shake some of the images from your mind once you’ve seen the film: A filthy, insane-looking turkey stares at a crying child from inside an ancient, dirty bathtub. An unhappy, overweight girl reigns as Queen Rita among the insects and lizards held prisoner under a house. One image in particular, that of a young boy swimming and looking for treasure in a flooded junkyard, is beautiful, grotesque, and haunting. Lauzon’s filmed visions are really something to behold.
The movie careens wildly between scenes of hilarious comedy and scenes of perverse violence and tragedy, and it left me with my head spinning. One scene toward the end in particular, involving the unspeakable abuse of a cat, seemed gratuitous. It was, however, the only scene in the movie that actually jarred me back to reality, reminding me that I am a movie viewer, and that I was watching a movie. I’m sure, though, that Lauzon had a reason for the inclusion of that scene, if only to drive home once more the horrible reality of the world that Leolo lives in. His dream world becomes all the more important during that scene, and I understood better why Leolo escaped to it so frequently.
Léolo is not a film for everyone. When I say it’s upsetting and unsettling, I mean just that. It is, however, a great movie for anyone looking for something new, something different, something totally unlike anything you’ve seen before. Like Leolo’s dreams, Jean-Claude Lauzon’s last film was derivative of nothing.
¶ 7:44 PM
