Valerie Lemercier’s “Aline” is a strange and dreary film about the life of Celine Dion, an actor most people would agree deserves a proper cinematic biography.
I love Dion and from the trailer, I thought it was going to be a jukebox music movie, like movies like “Walk the Line”, “Respect” or “Bohemian Rhapsody”.
Son, I was wrong.
Lemercier wrote the film (with Brigitte Buc), directed and starred as Aline Dieu – name changed but make no mistake, this is Celine Dion’s Story, complete with some Dion songs, source story her show business roots and even a description of how she met her husband.
At one point, a character accidentally calls Aline “Celine,” just to remind us who this is really about.
Here’s what “Aline” is about: it’s about Dion but there’s very little to be said about her. However, it says a lot about Lemercier, whose serious, redundant, poorly paced, and tasteless drama is both a love letter to its subject and, in particular, its introduction. for its star.
While Lemercier never sings (she lip-syncs to Dion’s voice as convincingly as Victoria Sio’s), she’s in every scene. I don’t know how old Lemercier is currently (and I won’t be rude to report her age) but, as an example of her gallantry and a big reason “Aline” never was. connection, that star is playing Dion from age. 5 to 56.
Yes, it’s Lemercier playing a kid in the opening scene. Then, Lemercier played Aline as a teenager, a teenager and 20 years old, but always looked too old for decades. It was a crazy choice.
Maybe the idea was to say that Aline was always an inner woman… or some nonsense like that, I don’t know. The bottom line is that Aline Dieu always looks like she went to the same school as Evan Hanson.
Yes, I’m referencing the pathetic performance of Platt, 28 years old, playing a high school student last year”Dear Evan Hanson,”
In doing so, Platt appears to be on a secret 21 Jump Street mission. Reviews, and box office receipts, are far-fetched.
However, that pales in comparison to “Aline,” which not only has the lead role due to an actress too old to pass a high school student, to put it mildly, but has no title tag for us. know what year it is.
Scene after scene, we had no idea where we were on Aline/Celine’s career timeline, and since our lead actress always appeared as a Canadian Benjamin Button, it was impossible to guess when what movie is going on.
The screenplay doesn’t serve its theme well, as there’s Dion’s entire story missing. There is no mention of when Dion/Aline recorded her first English songs and completed an album for the US (“Unison” in 1990), so we never knew what she became. What a success.
Here, we see her perform a bunch of random songs, appear on Canadian talk shows in France, and suddenly she’s given the demo tape for “My Heart Will Go On”. I was still waiting for the revelation that her “Where Does My Heart Beat Now” was an international success but no, the movie ignored that.
Imagine a movie about Elvis Presley that omits “The Ed Sullivan Show” or a Beatles biography minus the release of “Meet the Beatles!”
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What is put to length is Aline’s relationship with her manager, Guy Claude-Kamar (Sylvain Marcel), a clear representative for Rene Angelil. Marcel has an uncanny resemblance to the man he’s playing, but he and Lemercier don’t get along.
Dion recently lost her husband to cancer, so I’m going to be careful, because I don’t mean to be disrespectful: when the film depicts their union, it’s understandable that Guy has groomed Aline since when she was a teenager; the movie never came out and said that, though it didn’t stop at claiming their collaboration was inappropriate.
“Aline” should really make the decision to go dark or to protect the integrity of the couple’s relationship.
“Aline” is well-made and certainly ambitious, even though it feels twice as long as its 126-minute run time. Even without Lemercier’s ill-advised aging stuntman, the film drags on and never connects emotionally. The third act is crippling, with revolving shots of concert performances, Aline in her apartment, conversations in the back of the limo, another concert scene and repeat.
I’m not a huge fan of Dion but I listen to her music often, especially early 90s tunes (“Nothing Broken But My Heart” is my favorite ballad). “Aline” doesn’t cut it like a jukebox musical, as there isn’t enough real Dion music in this.
I love “I’m Alive,” even though that tune (theme from “Stuart Little 2”) is one of the few popular Dion hits on the soundtrack. Even if you change the channel whenever that song from “Titanic” plays, sitting down to watch a movie about Dion won’t feel like a chore, but that’s what “Aline” is about.
ALINE, Roadside Studios’ Celine Dion biopic, hit the box office, opening at just $21k in 61 theaters, $355 each. pic.twitter.com/9MjTsiJJyj
– Exhibitor relations company (@ERCboxoffice) April 11, 2022
The irrevocable moment comes in the form of Guy proposing to Aline, in which he treats Aline and her band for ice cream in Naples; Guy asks the ice cream seller to attach a large diamond ring to Aline’s ice cream, which she discovers in time before devouring it. Then she jumps around a fountain.
This scene is one of those made up for the movie, although its ridiculous nature is indeed offensive. Would Dion’s manager stuff the wedding ring in an ice cream, when there was a real risk that Dion would A. swallow it, B. choke, or C. all of the above and damage her vocal cords. it’s forever?
Of course that doesn’t happen in real life, though it says a lot about how stupid “Aline” was when that scene popped up here.
Lemercier deserves credit or notoriety for what she’s tried here but really, even the music video “Ashes (from Deadpool 2)” is a better Dion movie than “Aline”.
A star
