Review of Léolo (1992) by Eric H — 13 Apr 2016

At some time in our youth, many of us have soberly concluded that these large people in our house cannot be our parents. They are clumsy or brutal, lacking the divine spark we surely possess; and rather than being stolen by gypsies, we were left on their doorstep by some superior beings as a test of our ability to absorb pain and indignity.

Léo (Maxime Collin), 12, is nourished by this conviction as he watches his deranged Québecois brood mismanage their lives. He renames himself Léolo after determining that his mother had actually been impregnated by a Sicilian tomato.

This is the first of Lauzon's extravagant fantasies and, like other, odder ones, it is cogently grounded in the solitude that can smother any child- anybody. Lurching from the everyday obscenities of Léo's home life to his rapturous dream life and back again, Léolo takes the elixir of Latin America's magical realism and spikes it with the tartest French-Canadian satire.

Our young hero does survive a (hilarious) suicide attempt, but Lauzon, alas, did not live to make another film. He died in a plane crash at 43.