Once upon a time there was a child with a golden voice born in a small town in Quebec. Thanks to the support of her large family and of her mother in particular, she was taken in by a manager who believed in her talent and in her ability to become an immense star. From this professional relationship was born a great love which caused much talk. We will have recognized the life of Celine Dion there, but it is not quite that. It is rather the story of Aline Dieu, the heroine of the film Aline, freely inspired by Céline’s career. A modern fairy tale, an ode to the family and above all a tribute to the singer, this biographical exercise imagined by the actress, humorist and director Valérie Lemercier, is as improbable as it is irresistible.
Improbable, because Valérie Lemercier is French, and Céline is not simply Quebecois, she is “quintessentially” Quebecois. After making fun of it, many here are now proud of its global success. It is an object of national pride.
In France, where the reception of the film was dithyrambic, the public’s love for the singer, however fervent it may be, is not accompanied by this kind of attachment. If there is a potential obstacle to the success ofAline in Quebec, it is this love tinged with chauvinism. We don’t want to be told about Celine’s life, we want to be told about Celine’s life our Celine.
However, as it was immediately suggested, this is not what claims to offer Aline. Indeed, Valérie Lemercier’s film is not, but not at all, a traditional biography (for that, there is the TV movie Celine, from 2008: notice to Internet users who are already “cringe”). The artistic license that the filmmaker grants herself is not limited to a change of first name.
The result, this is one of its many qualities, is all the more singular.
A film-sum
Among other examples of the atypical approach adopted: Valérie Lemercier plays Aline from the age of five to fifty. Yes, when we discover Aline, a child, observing shyly but envying her thirteen brothers and sisters on stage, it is the face of the actress-director who overcomes the small body.
Obvious from the outset, the offbeat nature of the treatment, reinforced by the intermediate accent of the star, who refuses the playful caricature, is confirmed during the transition to adolescence. Valérie Lemercier then goes there with a mixture of awkwardness and absolutely cute innocence. Besides, she never makes fun of Aline-Céline, on the contrary.
Her film is the celebration of an idol, a stage animal like her, but in another sector: besides her roles in the theater and in the cinema (Visitors, Orchestral armchairs, The little Nicolas), Valérie Lemercier has had a brilliant career since 1989 as stand-up crowned with three Molière awards.
As she confided in these pages, she loves to play little girls and teenage girls in her shows. Hence this contagious pleasure, this playful drive, which emanates fromAline. Obviously, Valérie Lemercier put a lot of herself into this sixth achievement. So much so that it is permissible to see a film-sum there, so much Aline encompasses and refines everything that has come before, starting with a constant rejection of established narrative standards.
In Quadrille, according to Guitry’s play, Lemercier amplified the theatricality of the work rather than attenuating it, conferring an assumed artificiality on the film. There is that in Aline, especially in the rehearsals of still shots taken identically from one period to another (the living room of the Dieu family, for example). In The bottom, the filmmaker showed her taste for transformation. She played a woman who, believing to facilitate the reunion with her homosexual biological father, pretends to be a young man.
With Royal Palace!, we were already in the more diffuse exploration of the extraordinary destiny of a real female personality, Lady Di. At last, 100% cashmere, an incredible adoption story, and Marie-Francine, where an unemployed fifty-something is forced to return to the parental fold, both were interested in the family.
This is, in this case, one of the main themes ofAline, who observes with fondness the dynamics at work within the Dieu-Dion clan dominated by the mother, Sylvette (Danielle Fichaud, memorable).
Absolute sincerity
Admittedly, the editing sometimes seems abrupt, certain poorly negotiated ellipses tearing away from the narrative flow instead of plunging it into it. One or two gags fall flat, like the pronunciation of the word “Vatican” (perhaps funnier in France). The funniest part, the second act does not try to avoid the discomfort caused, initially, by the love story between the singer prodigy and her older manager (Sylvain Marcel, fabulous). There, as in the rest of her film, Valérie Lemercier favors such absolute sincerity that it completely disarms.
More serious, the third act moves: we think of this long sequence where Aline, bereaved and weary, wanders at dawn in Las Vegas to the sound of the song Going To A Town (” I’m so tired of America »), By Rufus Wainwright. Chills.
Laughter and emotion thus coexist throughout. At moments almost falling into a farce, there follow poignant passages, and vice versa. It shouldn’t work, and yet it does. As much can be said of the film, basically, Aline announcing itself on aberrant paper, but revealing itself in the fascinating image.