Léolo

Léo is no ordinary child. Convinced that his mother was impregnated by an Italian tomato, the French-Canadian boy insists on being called Léolo; disturbed by the lunatic behaviour of his father, sisters and brother, he finds refuge in his imagination and sexual fantasy. Director-writer Lauzon pulls off a bold fusion of the mystical and the macabre. Bleak humour combines with images of startling richness; heightened by Richard Grégoire's evocative score, hallucinatory passages conjure a very real sense of childhood isolation. Dark, disturbing and utterly compelling, this is coming-of-age as the stuff of nightmare.