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Keegan Linwood 201594519 Video Essay Summary                        

Video Essay Topic: What is Léolo’s response to his family’s madness, and the lower class challenges he faces, and why does the film adopt such a poetic and magical style at times? “Because I dream, I am not.” Léolo repeats this sentiment throughout the course of the movie. Because he dreams, he distances himself from the reality of his situation, therefore believes he is not in the rough situation he finds himself in in reality. Léolo accomplishes this by glorifying the idea of Italy as a poetic and magical place in his dreams, especially when contrasted to his reality in Quebec. Jean-Claude Lauzon perfectly demonstrates the contrast between Léolo’s dreams, and Léolo’s reality through stylistic choices. An example of this being executed in the film is the clothes hanging scene featuring Bianca. Lauzon illustrates the dreariness of reality that Léolo perceives by making the dominant colour a dark brown and grey mix. This signifies Léolo’s reality being a bleak and boring existence in lower class Quebec. In contrast, Léolo’s escape from reality involves taking Bianca out of Quebec and putting her in Italy. In this shot, the dominant colour is no longer a brown and grey mix, but rather a beige and green combination. The lighting ratio is much higher in the Italy shot than it is in the Quebec shot, which symbolizes Léolo’s dream for a more hopeful life. Bianca also sings a beautiful song in Italian during the scene transition, which further reinforces the desirable aspects of Italy for Léolo. The contrast illustrates how free Léolo feels when he’s in his dream state, whereas the Quebec shot shows how restricted Léolo feels in reality Lauzon contrasts the colours, lighting, and background between these two shots to show the audience Léolo’s perspective of life. To better understand why Léolo creates a poetic escape from reality, it is important to recognize and understand his reality. Léolo lives in lower class Quebec, which is a challenge in itself. But to top it off, Léolo was born into a family with a high genetic prevalence of mental illness. Because of Léolo’s family prevalence of genetic disorders, Léolo does not get the benefit of the doubt. Léolo’s escape from reality is interpreted as a mental illness, as he is grouped with the rest of his family. Léolo’s attempt to escape from his family’s madness inadvertently gets him falsely categorized with mental illness. Léolo’s mother is a strong figure in Léolo’s life, which brings up the nature vs. nurture argument when it comes to the family’s madness. Genetics do play a big role in mental illness, but the challenges faced by the lower class don’t help the situation either, despite the best intentions of Léolo’s mother. Whether it is nature or nurture is almost irrelevant when talking about Léolo’s collective family madness. If you’re dealt a poor hand in life, like Léolo experiences, it is extremely difficult to escape it.

Keegan Linwood 201594519                 

This explains why Léolo creates a surreal Italy in his imagination, because it’s his way of getting away from his family’s madness and lower class challenges. Lauzon perfectly illustrates Léolo’s complete separation from reality with the ice bath scene at the end of the film. In this scene, Léolo is shown hospitalised in isolation being diagnosed by a doctor in an ice tub. Lauzon incorporates low key lighting to illustrate a high contrast throughout the scene. This successfully symbolizes the contrast between Léolo’s two worlds, dream and reality. The bright light represents Léolo’s dream world of Italy, bright, exciting, and hopeful Whereas the dark contrast represents Léolo’s reality of Quebec, dark, dull, and hopeless. The dominant colour is a grey and black mix, despite the presence of high contrast lighting. This further demonstrates the bleakness of Léolo’s situation, as he ultimately is hospitalised. Lauzon’s use of low key lighting, close up shot, and a bleak dominant colour in this shot reinforces Léolo being stuck in a dreary reality, and the slipping away of Léolo’s dream world. Léolo’s response to his family’s madness, and the lower class challenges he faces, is to create an idealistic, desirable escape from reality in Italy. This allows Léolo to separate himself from the rest of his family in the search of a more hopeful life. Lauzon creates a poetic and magical style to reinforce Léolo’s escape from reality. Léolo’s dream world has to be more desirable than his reality, or else he wouldn’t have a reason to escape. Because of this, Lauzon creates a visually stunning Italy that Léolo perceives as much more attractive than lower class Quebec. Léolo, creates a visual and stylistic contrast between Italy and Quebec This creates a meaningful commentary on lower class challenges, as well as help the audience understand why Léolo creates an escape from reality from his bleak reality....