If Celine Dion has probably not yet seen Aline, although she is ready for it, some of her relatives have done it for her: her sister Claudette and her brother Michel. The latter were invited by Julie Snyder, in her show The week of 4 Julie for Noovo. They said frankly what they thought of the film, which is already a hit in the cinema.
Celine Dion’s manager for three decades and one of the architects of the star’s career, Michel Dion is inevitably very present in Aline, true / false biopic around the most famous Quebec diva on the planet. And, clearly, he didn’t agree with the tone of the film. “Even if they wanted to make a kind of comedy I find that, frankly, for mom [la défunte Thérèse Dion, jouée par l’excellente Danielle Fichaud, NDLR], and even for Céline, they went too far“, he reacted at first, then quoting many details of the film with which he did not laugh and which for him were false.
Therein lies the whole problem, the star’s clan totally missed out on the humorous aspect announced from the outset by Valérie Lemercier who did not want to make an outright biopic, hence his choice of fictitious first names. “Obviously there are a lot of funny things, but that’s not making fun of Celine Dion. Not at all !“, she said in 2018 on Europe 1 to relate her approach, between sincere tribute and the desire to entertain people with the incredible life of the interpreter of my heart Will Go On. “It will be a funny movie. I will ask Celine for permission, but I think she has a lot of humor and derision“, she said again to the Parisian in 2017. “I’m not a filmmaker, I’m not a director at all, at all, at all, but when I see a film like that, and I know the story, I tell myself that people are making fuss. The movie we saw Claudette and I, it’s not exactly what we thought it was“, added Michel Dion.
Clearly less nuanced and furious, Claudette Dion has ignited the project of Valérie Lemercier – which however already records 900,000 admissions in France – and declared: “For me, it’s not a great success … My mother, she never spoke like that to René. And Celine she has never lacked for anything. We pass for a gang of Bougons (…) I do not recognize the language, I do not recognize my family, I do not recognize our roots (…) She took a nasty trip on the back of Celine’s life. (…) It’s true that it’s a beautiful love story but it didn’t reach me, it didn’t touch me. I collapse ! It’s not that !”“She also blames Valérie Lemercier for certain deliberately humorous – very funny – scenes that did not exist, both in her sumptuous Florida villa on her wedding day or on her supposed habit of stealing bags of sugar in hotels. …