The film also stars Ginette Reno, Pierre Bourgault, Andrée Lachapelle, Denys Arcand, Julien Guiomar, and Germain Houde.

Initially released in the 1992 Cannes Film Festival, Léolo won three Genie Awards, including Best Original Screenplay for Lauzon, losing Best Motion Picture to Naked Lunch.

In Mile End, Montreal, Léo Lauzon is a young boy living in a tenement with his dysfunctional family, serving as the unreliable narrator.

Growing up in an apartment with a rat in the bathtub, a turkey and a family obsessed with regular bowel movements, Léolo continues to write.

Léolo observes a neighbouring young woman named Bianca and imagines her singing to him from a closet, emitting a white light.

His grandfather, who Léolo believes attempted to murder him by holding him under a pool, helps her financially and extorts her for sexual favours, revealing her breasts and putting his feet in her mouth.

The Word Tamer, continuously monitoring Léolo's thoughts, reads of the boy's hopes for how Fernand's muscles will make them invincible.

Part of the way the narrative shifts from natural to fantasy elements is through the Word Tamer character, who becomes "an omniscient god-like observer".

[5] Film scholar Jim Leach wrote that in real life, Lauzon would call himself a Canadian director, despite contemporary belief Quebec cinema was distinct.

[14] Before completing high school and going on to study film in university, Lauzon stated he had lived on "the criminal fringes" of Montreal streets, and his dark perspective is found in Léolo.

[16] Although Lauzon had offers to shoot Hollywood action films after Night Zoo (1987),[9] he instead presented the Léolo script to producer Lyse Lafontaine.

[1] Singer Ginette Reno was cast as the mother after initially rejecting the role, finding the subject matter was "too violent and rough".

[19] For the part of the Word Tamer, who reads Léolo's writings, Lauzon cast his mentor, university professor Pierre Bourgault.

[23] When Lafontaine traveled to Italy with Lauzon, he gave her a letter thanking her for her ineptitude in business, which he considered necessary to make a film with feeling.

[25][26] At Cannes, Lauzon supposedly told juror Jamie Lee Curtis he wanted to have sex with her, which Los Angeles Times writer Kenneth Turan believed compromised the film's prospects of winning the Palme d'Or.

[39] Roger Ebert gave the film four stars, writing "Léolo is an enchanting, disgusting, romantic, depressing, hilarious, tragic movie, and it is quite original- one of the year's best.

[14] Peter Brunette of The New York Times wrote "It's a bizarre, occasionally upsetting film, but its underlying portrait-of-the-artist-as-a-young-man theme couldn't be more classic".

[42] That year, Ebert added it to his Great Movies list, writing on "the deep amusement and even love that Lauzon conveys in his material".

[49][50] The film was selected for competition for the Palme d'Or at Cannes, and its loss caused critics to accuse the jury of conservative choices.

[24] At the 13th Genie Awards, Léolo received nine nominations and was perceived as being in an unusually tight competition with David Cronenberg's Naked Lunch.