Mon Dieu. What are they putting in the water over in France? First Leos Carax makes an entire musical about a creepy puppet baby, and now the fiftysomething director and actress Valérie Lemercier has cast herself as a toddler. I’ve seen Aline described as a comedy, which I think is a generous read of this biopic inspired by the life of singer Céline Dion, notably made without the permission or participation of the international icon. But there is at least a kind of contact high that comes from Lemercier’s utterly demented decision to play Dion (rechristened “Aline Dieu” for the film) at age 5 and 12 and 17 and so on, through digital trickery and clever camera setups and a kind of childish energy that recalled for me Molly Shannon’s Catholic schoolgirl SNL creation, Mary Katherine Gallagher. It’s so out there – so distracting and discomfiting and high-wire thrilling in its seeming wrongheadedness – that it raises expectations that the rest of Aline will be just as gonzo.
Alas, as the age gap between Aline and Lemercier’s true age shrinks, so too does the feeling that Aline is doing anything especially original. (Improbably, Lemercier was awarded the César Award for Best Actress for her performance; the film earned another nine nominations.) I wonder if Lemercier chose to play the character at all ages to avoid the ickiness of casting a child actor against Sylvain Marcel, who plays the funhouse version of Dion’s manager and eventual husband René Angélil. What little dramatic tension the film unearths is drawn from the couple’s transition from child star and Svengali (they first met when she was 12 and he was 39) to furtive lovers and then a deeply devoted married couple with kids. There’s nothing particularly probing about the film’s examination of their relationship, or Aline’s relationship to her fame; it’s all surfaces and soft edges. French singer Victoria Sio, dubbing in for Lemercier’s lip-sync performances, is a capable dupe for the original, and the production and costume design convincingly re-create the eras and Dion’s most memorable costumes. But to what purpose? There are no insights here, only lavishly budgeted cosplay.
This article appears in April 22 • 2022.
