Wonderful Movie

Truly the worst movie I've ever seen in a theater

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

young 12 year old boy masturbates in a piece of raw meat.....young nude girl bites an old mans toenails....young boys use a cat for sex.....mother falls in a tomato truck and gets pregnant by tomato....dad and mom watch son evacuate his bowels and clap when he does it. IS THAT ENUFF FOR YOU. and some say i didn't understand the film and it is a masterpiece. sorry but this movie is rotten to the core. and im french..and i don't betray my people because the movie C.R.A.Z.Y was a million times better. leolo is an absolute disaster. 1 point for cinematography though...and thats it. THOSE who loved it well.......good for you but you ain't no friend of mine

Jean-Claude Lauzon's semi-autobiographical Leolo, the last film he made before his death in a plane crash in 1995, is a powerful and unique masterpiece that, for me, will never grow old. Dramatizing the thin line between art and madness, Leolo is one of the most unique films ever made: vulgar, audacious, imaginative, disturbing, yet deeply compassionate. Though Leolo feels very personal to me, it is a film made for every outsider whose environment is so devoid of the things that nurture their souls, that, to survive, they must escape into a world of dreams, surviving only by being a spectator to their own life.12-year-old Leolo (Maxime Collin) lives in a squalid tenement in Montreal, Canada, yet to him, he is no longer Leo Lozeau but an expatriate Sicilian named Leolo Lozone. Blaming his grandfather for infecting everyone with his errant genes, the boy lives in a home where insanity rules, affecting most of his family, except for his mother (Ginette Reno). He describes his world as "strange, harrowing, stinking, with no friends and no light." His father, a rotund sweaty man who has the warmth of a night patrolman, slinks around the house obsessed with everyone's toilet habits, making sure that everyone visits the bathroom at least once a day. Dreaming of his neighbor Bianca, a few years older than him, he navigates between his adolescent urges and the reality of his sordid existence, surviving only by resting his head "between two worlds, in the valley of the vanquished." He reads in the basement with only the light from a half-opened refrigerator door and writes in his journal whenever he can, finding his "only real joy in solitude. Solitude is his castle." When his brother is beaten up twice by the same thug, even though he has put on an enormous amount of muscle, Leolo notes that "fear lives in the deepest part of our being, no matter our outward appearance." His cry "Because I dream, I am not" enters our heart and buries itself until it is our own, a cry from the depths of our being. Filled with stunning bursts of poetry and a gorgeous eclectic soundtrack, Leolo is a touching, yet heartbreaking experience. For those who know what it means to grow up alone, at odds with the world around you, Leolo will make you feel that you have found a kindred spirit.

Other users seem to have enjoyed this film, but I thought it was revolting. Who wants to watch a movie where a kid puts raw meat in the bathtub, then slides it into his underwear, and has an orgasm with it? Oh and then his family eats the meat for dinner. Okay, fine so it's a human interest story about a kid growing up in a highly dysfunctional family... but the narrator doesn't seem to be any less dysfunctional than his relatives.To make things even more interesting, Leolo's family believes that in order to avoid disease in their impoverished surroundings, one must "shit" all the time, so Leolo grows up taking daily laxative shock treatments. His parents even check to make sure he has had a good BM or they sit in the same room with him while he excretes.Can I just say that I don't understand why ANYONE would want to watch this movie? The only reason I did is that my dad had rented it and said it was "about a boy growing up." Sounds harmless, right? The director could have included a few of the bathroom scenes at the beginning of the movie to give viewers a sense of how this poor kid grew up, but it was unnecessary to interrogate people with these preverted images.

'I loved Fernand for his ignorance...because I dream I am not' I watched Leolo again on IFC few nights ago (after what is now more then ten years when I first saw it in a theater) and realized that this film was one of the catalysts for my entrance into the world of cinema. To be part of the film industry is very much, I believe, to dream big. The moment I stop dreaming I would seize to exist. Like Leolo said 'because I don't dream, I am not'. An essential tool for dreaming may be the hardship in having to deal with misunderstood reality. Or possibly being misunderstood all together. Psychological torment and trying to make sense out of situations we find ourselves in, status quo, or sympathy for the world which regardless of our actions keeps going it's own path leaves an artist in constant turmoil. I feel i have so much in common with Leolo that I fear of my own 'death' as a dreamer. Still, just seeing 'Leolo' gives comfort and lesson that once you stop dreaming...life of an artist seizes to exist. Thank you for once again showing me the path.