Celine Dion is a superstar. “Aline – The Voice of Love” has now been published about the life of the Canadian pop singer. A fictional biopic with humor and a dose of risk.
Paris – She released her first record at the age of 13, seven years later she had already produced 14 albums and won several gold records. Celine Dion is one of the most successful pop singers worldwide.
“Aline – The Voice of Love” tells the unique fate of the Canadian diva who became a world star as the youngest child of a family of 14. A film was created between humorous fiction and moving reality.
The drama shows the most important stages in the life of the singer, who was born in the Canadian province of Québec: her childhood in Charlemagne in poor but harmonious circumstances. Her first successes with the song “Ce n’était qu’un rêve”, which her mother and brother Jacques composed for her. Her meeting with the producer, manager and future husband René Angélil, who died in 2016, as well as the birth of her three sons.
A secret love
A story that is moving because it portrays the woman behind the artist. It shows a singer who fell in love with her producer, who was 26 years her senior, as a young girl. An initially secret love that her mother tried to prevent. It shows a diva struggling to get pregnant and a wife who, in January 2016, had to say goodbye to the man of her life who had cancer.
Her career unfolds to the rhythm of Dion’s greatest hits, sung by the French Victoria Sio. The protagonist Aline Dieu, who has everything from the real diva in the film except her name, is played by the French actress Valérie Lemercier, who also directed the film. She plays the star as a young girl, teenager and in her late forties. A daring choice that initially bothers you, but is convincing in the end.
Tribute to an idol
Lemercier’s fictional biography is as funny as it is touching, confusing and sometimes a bit cheesy. But she is always full of empathy. Because the 57-year-old is a big fan of Dion and wanted to pay homage to her idol.
In France, the film had a great success with 900,000 viewers in just two weeks after its theatrical release in mid-November. Also at the Cannes Film Festival. There he was celebrated with an ovation outside of the competition.
Criticism from the family
Part of the Dion family was less enthusiastic. The film he saw with his sister Claudette is not quite what they expected, Michel Dion, her brother, told Canadian media. He does not recognize the language, nor his family, nor their roots.
Lemercier, on the other hand, defends her work. In the French-Canadian production, the cast – except for Lemercier – consists of actors from Quebec, where the film premiered at the end of November. She knows that she does not mimic the accent well, while she worked with a Quebec woman while filming, said the actress and director of the Canadian newspaper “La Presse”.
Lemercier didn’t want to make a documentary with “Aline – The Voice of Love” either. This is a movie. There are things that are not true, she explained in “La Presse”. These include the scenes in which her producer and manager – in the film his name is Guy-Claude Kamar – asks her for her hand in Italy with a diamond ring hidden in her ice cream. Or how she gets lost in one of her huge properties and climbs through the window of her parents’ house in her voluminous wedding dress.
You’ve turned a vision between fantasy and reality, Lemercier said. But under no circumstances did she make fun of Celine Dion. And Dion himself? She shouldn’t have seen the film yet.
Aline – The Voice of Love, France, Canada 2021, 126 min., FSK oA, by Valérie Lemercier, with Valérie Lemercier, Sylvain Marcel, Danielle Fichaud dpa
