‘Leolo’

Nothing describes “Leolo,” nothing does it justice. It’s a film you feel more than analyze, a movie that offers emotional rather than literal images. And though it is as intoxicated with language as it is with images, it comes so strongly from memory and the subconscious that it resists tidy summation. French-Canadian writer-director Jean-Claude Lauzon has turned his film, about the coming of age of an artistic boy in an unforgiving environment, into an assault, filling it with pitiless and profane images that can’t help but make you squirm. The story revolves around 12-year-old Leo Lozeau (Maxime Collin, center) growing up in the decay of Montreal’s tough Mile End neighborhood. (Pictured are Yves Montmarquette, left, as Leolo’s brother, and a friend throwing Leolo overboard (Cinemax Wednesday at 8 p.m.).