Cheeky ‘biopic’ is not easily forgotten
Oh wow, this has to be one of the wildest movies of the past year. A glitzy, sweeping drama focused on a Quebec-born youngest child of 14 who become a global singing sensation.
However, while French writer, director and actor Valerie Lemercier’s (best known in the English-speaking world for her turns in the 1995 version of Sabrina and Selena Gomez’s 2011 rom-com Monte Carlo) soapy, but sensationally compelling tale might be billed as a work of fiction, as it’s opening title boldly states, it is clearly inspired by the life of Celine Dion (‘‘modified in keeping with the author’s vision’’).
Yes, there are moments where you feel like you’re watching an unauthorised Lifetime movie, or a VH1 Behind
the Music, with truly cringy reenactments, yet there’s an audacity, cheekiness and swagger to the story that means you can’t help but be swept along by the rollercoaster ride that is Aline Dieu’s incidentfilled career. And some of the dialogue really is a hoot.
‘‘My princess deserves a prince – not an old prune twice her age,’’ Aline’s mother Sylvette (Danielle Fichaud) warns her daughter’s manager Guy-Claude Kamar (Sylvain Marcel), as their relationship increasingly becomes the subject of tabloid speculation. Then there’s the hilarious – and clearly deliberate – moment when the ‘‘fiction’’ threatens to shatter.
‘‘I’m talking to you – Celine,’’ a record producer snaps. ‘‘Aline,’’ Sylvette hurriedly corrects him.
Another part of the joy here is in seeing how Lemercier and company tweak key events. Eurovision becomes the ‘‘Dublin Singing Competition’’, while there’s a ‘‘titanic’’ night at a celebration of cinema and a long-term residency in America’s Sin City. Even more intriguingly, some of Dion’s most famous tunes feature on the soundtrack (sung here, not by Lemercier, but French singer Victoria Sio), along with – oddly – tracks made more famous by Roger Whittaker and Nat King Cole.
Then there’s the little moments. Doing her hair in the airline toilet, cooing over Anne Geddes calendars, finding an engagement ring in a gelato. All overflowing with symbolism, but also memorable in a terrifically over-the-top way, which is reflective of Lemercier’s performance as a whole. The bold decision to play Aline through a variety of ages and then alter her own looks using post-production digital technology is both inspired and somewhat distracting, but, given the tone of the whole endeavour, seems wholly appropriate.
Nominated for 10 Cesar Awards, this perhaps doesn’t offer up the same reverential
Respect to its subject as the recent Aretha Franklin lookbacks, but for fun, frothy entertainment, Aline is hard to beat.
Aline opened in select cinemas on February 17.