STasera up Rai 1 at 9.30pm goes on air Aline – The voice of lovefilm directed and starred in by Valérie Lemercier on the life and career of Céline Dion – although he has a slightly different name in the film. The queen of power ballads like My Heart Will Go On And Because You Loved Me reappeared in public by surprise a few weeks ago – at the Grammys ceremony – despite the disabling disease which is blocking her muscles.
Aline – The voice of lovethe plot of the movie
Set in Quebec in the late 1960stells the story of a young girl born into a family where music has fundamental importance.
Aline (Valerie Lemercier, winner of a César for Best Performance) is the 14th child of Sylvette (Danielle Fichaud) and Anglomard Dieu (Roc LaFortune). Unlike his brothers He has a special gift: a magnificent voice. His crystalline talent was discovered at the age of 12 Guy-Claude Kamar (Sylvain Marcel), an experienced music producer – in real life Dion’s husband was called Rene Angelil – who decides to transform her into the greatest singer in the world.
Supported by the family and helped by Guy-Claude – with which in the meantime it was born an overwhelming love despite the age difference –, Aline begins climbing to the Olympus of music. Made of unexpected triumphs, enormous satisfactions in my career and in love but also personal tragedies which will mark her deeply. As the loss of the beloved Guy-Claude with whom, in the meantime, he had three children.
A free and very ironic biopic
And to think that it all started as a joke. We are in 2017 and during the promotion of his film Marie-Francine, the actress and director Valérie Lemercierguest on a radio show, announces, jokingly, that his next film would be a biopic on Céline Dion. Her production designer, Emmanuelle Duplay, calls her enthusiastically asking to be part of the film and Lemercier really begins to think seriously about a film about the Canadian pop star of My Heart Will Go On.
At the start, writes the script using the real names of the protagonists. Then at a later stage, the screenwriter Brigitte Buc advises her to use fictitious names, so as to be freer to invent situations, while slightly changing Dion’s biography and thus giving vent to her creativity. The result is an absolutely bizarre film (in a good way), where Lermercier, despite being fully authorized by those who manage Dion’s musical rights in France, “uses” Céline’s biography to give life to Aline’s, a kind of “avatar” of the pop star. Voiced, in the singing scenes, by the very talented Victoria Sio.
To make matters worse, Valérie uses CGI on herself in a self-ironic way, becoming Aline at all ages. Including the school one. Combining effectively intimacy and spectacularityand focusing more on the pop star’s private life, Aline – The voice of love turns out a decidedly kitsch operation (as is often the life of these megastars), but full of irony and creative freedom.
Valérie Lemercier and Sylvain Marcel in a scene from “Aline – The voice of love”. (Lucky Red)
Valérie Lemercier and her “closeness” with Céline Dion
Born in the French countryside in 1964, the future actress and director He made his film debut at the end of the 1980s and in a short time it becomes one of France’s most beloved comedic actresses. She too is in theater and on television, where she is often a guest and star in many transalpine programmes.
At the beginning of the 2000s, Valérie also successfully tried her hand as dramatic actress in the movie Vendredi soir by Claire Denis while in 2013 he made his first directorial debut with Our son has arrived. Feminist icon in her homeland, Valérie, shortly before the release of the film in 2022, said in an interview with Elle the decision to make a film about Dion’s life.
«I share a distant discomfort with her» confided Lemercier «Me too I was certainly not the prettiest girl in high school, but the awkward, unfashionable onebullied for this and it took a lot of analysis to get out of it and find confidence in myself, overcome anxiety. I’ve always liked his music and then, one day, I realized how fragile he was under his armor as a showbiz star.”
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