Canada,
1992, 109 min
Shown in 1993
CREDITS
- dir
-
Jean-Claude Lauzon
- prod
-
Lyse Lafontaine, Aimée Danis
- scr
-
Jean-Claude Lauzon
- cam
-
Guy Dufaux
- editor
-
Michel Arcand
- cast
-
Maxime Collin, Ginette Reno, Julien Guiomar, Pierre Bourgault, Giudittta del Vecchio
- source
-
Fine Line Features
-
COMMENTS
Jean-Claude Lauzon in person.
OTHER
Set in the 1950s, this coming-of-age tale, a mélange of humor and pathos, cuts a unique path which is utterly seductive and emotionally devastating. The central character is Léolo, a young boy growing up in the tenements and squalid courtyards of East Montreal. Surrounded by a family whose members range from eccentric to mad, Léolo escapes into a world of dreams and obsessions, both master and victim of his swirling fantasies: he convinces himself he is Italian, the offspring of a sperm-doused Sicilian tomato. Weaving together Léolo's real and imaginary lives, writer-director Jean-Claude Lauzon exhibits an unmistakable instinct for cinematic theatricality. Starting with a chest of memories that the child Léolo opens in the middle of the night, Lauzon draws us into the maelstrom of this family: a father obsessed by the health of the family's bowels; a brother whose compulsive bodybuilding barely hides his fear of people; two sisters who spend more and more time together in the psychiatric ward; and a grandfather who is held responsible for the genetic failure of the whole family. Only Léolo's mother is sane, a sweetly mountainous figure sailing onward through troubled waters. Léolo's need to create a unique identity is palpable and desperate. Using his primary means of survival—his imagination—eventually, Léolo escapes into the life of the mind.
FACTOID #80
The globetrotting thespian Anthony Quinn attended the 1969 San Francisco International Film Festival in support of the Opening Night film The Secret of Santa Vittoria, in which he played the half-drunk mayor of an Italian hamlet, protecting his town’s wine collection from German soldiers.
