A filmmaker’s journey to the center of Celine Dion
Valérie Lemercier’s new film is about an endearingly quirky, mega-famous Canadian belter. Her hits include “My Heart Will Go On” and “The Power of
Love.” She was happily married to her much older manager.
No, not Celine Dion, but Aline Dieu.
“Aline,” which Lemercier directed and stars in, is kooky and heartfelt, loving and wonderfully bonkers — not unlike the superstar who inspired it in all but name. The movie scrupulously incorporates the major themes present in most traditional biopics — family, love, struggle, art — while slyly tweaking them. And a decisive step was switching from Celine to Aline.
“I started with the real names,” Lemercier said in a video call from Paris in December. “But Brigitte Buc, my co-writer, told me, ‘Change them, it’ll be simpler.’ And it was true: It became easier, we could make up things.”
Before its American April 8 release, “Aline” has already earned accolades. The multihyphenate Lemercier, one of France’s most idiosyncratic artists for more than three decades, won the César Award for best actress in February; the movie, her sixth behind the camera, earned 10 nominations. “Artists publicly recommended the film, and that’s not common in France,” Lemercier said. “I got a lot of supportive messages from directors, as if they were saying I had earned the right to be in their club.”
While the film starts with a disclaimer that it is “a work of fiction,” it uses Dion music (Lemercier lip-syncs excerpts from the Dion songbook performed by Victoria Sio) and is largely faithful to her story arc, from childhood in a hardscrabble Quebecois family to international stardom and, most importantly, to her passionate relationship with René Angélil, the music manager who discovered her when she was 12 and he was 38, and became her husband 14 years later.
Still, “Aline” reflects distinct aesthetic and narrative choices, so much so that after the film’s presentation at the 2021 Cannes festival, Kyle Buchanan of The New York Times wrote that “it steers into its eccentricities so hard that it somehow boomerangs back into auteurism.”
Among the many flourishes was the decision by Lemercier, 58, to play Aline at every stage in her life — including as a 5-yearold, with a little CGI and forcedperspective tricks. This would not have surprised audiences in France, where “Aline” came out in November, because Lemercier, known for her biting comic style, has long portrayed children in TV sketches and in her one-woman performances; in one of her signatures sketches, she plays a twitchy contestant on a kids’ talent show. “Little girls, more than little boys, fascinate me — what they say, what they imagine, what goes on in their mind,” Lemercier said.
There are hints of autobiography throughout the film, particularly in young Aline’s drive to perform. Lemercier grew up in a farming family with three sisters and learned quickly that her clowning around could lighten her depressed mother’s mood. “When I made people laugh at a young age, even younger than 5, I immediately felt that I existed, that I had a purpose, that I would not be useless,” Lemercier said. “For me, it’s the pleasure of making people laugh, and for her, it’s the pleasure of singing.”
For French viewers, the film’s affectionate tone scrambled their notions of Lemercier and her style. Her humor can be quite dark, especially at the theater, and she gleefully exploits the jarring discrepancy between her elegant, poised appearance — she looked impeccably put together in our video chat — and crude, often scatological jokes. Her satirical barbs have not spared peers like Juliette Binoche, who was once the target of a biting fake commercial.
“Everybody assumed I was going to make a parody, but that was never my plan,” Lemercier said of “Aline.” “I’m not much for tenderness; it really bugs me, generally speaking, and I tend to go more for sarcasm. But this time around — no,” she continued. “I wanted to be sincere, to do an open love letter.” (Some of Dion’s siblings have criticized the film for, among other things, what they felt was a cartoonish portrayal of their family. Early in the process, Lemercier passed on her script to Dion’s French manager, whom she said approved of the tone; a spokesperson stated in an email that “Celine has not seen the movie, nor does she have any comments about it.”)
Capturing the Quebecois culture was key to Lemercier, who extensively researched the province’s culture and mores and insisted on local casting. “I demanded — and it was not easy — Quebecois actors who are unknown in France,” she said. “I fought one of the film’s backers, who did not want to hear of them.” Among those actors was Sylvain Marcel, who played the Angélil character (renamed GuyClaude Kamar) and thus had to help sell the romance between the singer and a man nearly 30 years her senior.
“It’s very delicate, because the story revolves around their love,” Quebecois journalist Denise Bombardier, who once shadowed Dion on tour for a 2009 book, said on the phone.
For Marcel, who comes from the same Montreal suburb as Dion, everything flowed from a relatively straightforward motivation. “For me the idea was,
‘You love her, it’s crazy how much you love her,’ ” he said in a video conversation. “And that’s based on what René experienced with her.”
The film does take liberties with some details of Dion’s life, but only to find a way into a psyche that, after almost 35 years in the limelight, remains somewhat opaque. “It’s about creating a Celine flavor, a flavor called Aline,” Lemercier said.