Léolo (1992)

This is a very sad and sick movie. A review of professional critics and IMDb user comments and message board don't seem to address an obvious and obscene fact. According to the IMDb, the actor who played Leolo, Maxime Collin, was about 12 years old at the time of the filming. This child actor is involved in pedophilia (adults having sex with children) and bestiality (people having sex with animals) scenes. We see him masturbating himself, being masturbated by a women (actually she is masturbating two children), and apparently having sex with a cat. We can say that they are "just acting", but the reason pedophile behavior is wrong is because children are too young to know what is going on and in no position to say no to an adult.This movie reflects a film industry that encourages perverted and morally-reprehensible films, and an audience that just doesn't seem to care. Shame on the people who made this film, on the critics who thought it was so wonderful, on the governmental authorities who didn't prosecute the film makers, and on all of us who knowingly or unwittingly watched it.

I have seen this movie on DVD, and I was a bit confused. I always thought that I am somehow intelligent and able to understand even complicated plots and thoughts, but this time, I failed. Or can it be that this movie is really not as good as so many people tell us? The story is weird, and I cannot believe that it is a proof of intellectual level that we see a young girl eating an old man's toenails, while a young boy watches her and "plays with himself". And also the rest of the story is only weird. Frankly speaking, this movie is also boring and did not touch me, at all. Everything only seems to give me the impression that the director wanted to talk about some severe problems that he might have had during his childhood!? If he wants, he should go to a psychiatrist. But he should not bore audience with his thoughts.

I absolutely adore this movie.I first saw it with a group of friends at the local college town art cinema when it was first released. When it ended, hardly anyone in the theater even stirred, slowly and quietly rising only after the credits ran out. Afterwards, we went for drinks, as had been the plan for the evening, but it took a long time for us to break out of the film's spell and begin to really talk. When we finally did, each of us was relieved to find that everyone else had been as moved by it as each had individually.The reason for all this doubt and anxiety, I believe, is the film itself. It doesn't rely on any conventions at all, nor does it allow the viewer to respond via convention. What it does do is provide the viewer with an intensely private view of the characters. You get to see them in broad daylight at times and on occasions where one would most want to be absolutely alone. Because of this willingness to really expose its characters, a more honest self-relation is demanded in response and for a response. (In this respect in reminds me a bit of Milan Kundera's novels, during the reading of which I often find myself embarrassed for the characters that I am there intruding on their privacy.) I think what myself and my friends (then still young adults) feared was revealing something about ourselves--a kind of fragility and ambivalence in one's own self-relation that one normally represses, but which this film repeatedly draws to the surface. Wouldn't admitting that one was moved by these characters be also an admission that one could relate to them in some more profound way? Yes, and I have felt just a little bit less alone in the world since seeing Leolo. Not better perhaps, but less alone.A truly great, great movie. Rent it on VHS, grab a Canadian DVD off of Ebay, or pester IFC to show it again (record it because you'll want to see it again), but don't miss it.

'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.