for sexual favours, revealing her breasts and putting his feet in her mouth. Léolo begins to fantasize about Bianca sexually and discovers masturbation. Meanwhile, his brother Fernand, after being beaten by a bully and failed in a special education class, builds up impressive muscles. The Word Tamer, continuously monitoring Léolo's thoughts, reads of the boy's hopes for how Fernand's muscles will make them invincible. However, upon being confronted by the bully for a second time, Fernand is overwhelmed with fear and is beaten again while Léolo watches in shock. Finally convinced his grandfather is responsible for all of the family's troubles, Léolo attempts to lower a noose and hang his grandfather while he is in the bath. His grandfather sees Léolo doing it and is choked, before finally being freed, with Léolo injured in the process. Léolo subsequently goes to the hospital, where he is told his actions could constitute attempted murder, though he is not charged. Reacting with horror to the ways other boys are pursuing sex, he seeks out the services of a prostitute named Regina. Upon later becoming ill, he ends up in the same institution where many other members of his family have been treated. Cast Themes and interpretations New York remarked on the classical allusions in the story: Léolo dreams of Sicily, of sunlight and Greek ruins, and of a slender Italian girl, Bianca, a neighbor, whom he imagines standing on a hill in Taormina singing to him. Léolo is meant to be a modern Dante sitting in one of the dark circles of his hell, and Bianca is his Beatrice. The story is also related with a "dreamlike environment", with "choral music" that evokes "the possibility of spiritual transcendence". 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". Author Bill Marshall assessed the Word Tamer as one of the benign elders, as opposed to the bad ones, and hypothesized that the Word Tamer's abode, Federico Fellini's Cinecittà property, symbolizes the film's "exaggerated, grotesque realism". Some Canadian analysis of Léolo has related to possible political symbolism and Quebec's national identity. In 1992 at the Toronto International Film Festival, programming director Piers Handling called the film an "epitaph for Quebec", in which the title character rejects his Quebecois identity and joins another world by fantasy. Canadian historian George Melnyk remarked that