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The rise of pop icon Celine Dion
Aline (Valérie Lemercier) at the height of her career. Photo: Jean-Marie Leroy / Weltkino
Québec, Canada, 1932. It is a tough life that loggers lead to reclaim the wilderness. And yet people live, love – and get married. When Anglomard Dieu (Roc Lafortune) and Sylvette (Danielle Fichaud) say yes, there is only a small gold coin as a wedding present. A lucky charm still in its third generation.
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Québec, Canada, 1960. A small, shabby wooden hut has room for a dozen or so children that Sylvette gave birth to although her husband Anglomard did not want any children. Aline is born as a latecomer – and 14th child – whose great musical talent is revealed at the latest at the wedding of one of her older sisters, when she bellows “Mamy Blue” in front of the large family that the glasses are ringing on the festive table.
The five-year-old is soon in demand at private and school performances and is convinced that she will one day become a famous singer. When she was twelve years old, her eldest brother Jean-Bobin (Antoine Vézina) sent a demo cassette to the famous music producer Guy-Claude Kamar (Silvain Marcel). And ask when he still hasn’t contacted you after two weeks.
From ice skating to auditioning
Paris is Aline’s (Valérie Lemercier, center) longed-for destination, here with her mother Sylvette (Danielle Fichaud) and her manager Guy-Claude Kamar (Silvain Marcel). Photo: Jean-Marie Leroy / Weltkino
With success: From ice skating it goes straight to the Kamars office, where Aline masters an unplugged rehearsal with flying colors. This “rough diamond” soon became Guy-Claude’s workhorse: after appearances on TV shows, the first record was immediately gilded. But Aline still has to work on herself: her English is being perfected (Québec is in the French-speaking part of Canada), the teeth are being regulated, a new hairstyle is removing the girlish and a well-toned body helps to cope with the stresses of the countless PR appointments and concert appearances.
To the horror of her mother, Aline fell in love with the “old Hutzel plum” Guy-Claude. When the now twenty-year-old won the Grand Prix in 1988, the Canadian premier called – and the upcoming European tour was sold out in one fell swoop. In Naples, Aline discovers Guy-Claude’s diamond ring in a scoop of ice cream – and now they finally marry her one and only love. What really starts the stress: Aline wants a child. After a long period of medical treatment, her son is finally born, whom she is taking to a concert in Paris for the first time. “Junior” is not amused when twin sisters endanger his status as Crown Prince.
When Guy-Claude, who had been ailing for a long time, died in hospital and Aline collapsed on the open stage in Las Vegas, she found an understanding friend in her gay make-up artist Fred (Jean-Noël Brouté) – and shelter in his small two-room apartment in front of the hungry pack of the boulevard …
126-minute biopic
“I’m a pretty normal girl”: “Aline” surprised on July 13, 2021 in Cannes and on October 7, 2021 at the Hamburg Film Festival with the continuous casting of the title role by 57-year-old director Valérie Lemercier. The digital processing cannot hide this absurdity, which looks like a foreign body with all the glamor. “The Voice of Love”, the subtitle of the 126-minute long biopic, is inspired by the life and love story of pop icon Celine Dion, whose name was changed to Aline Dieu for legal reasons because the film was also Celine Relationship to her manager and husband, the Canadian singer René Angélil, discussed.
The homage Valérie Lemercier was able to fall back on the original music (Aline voice: Victoria Sio) and unites Dion’s greatest hits. She deviates from the actual biography of the Franco-Canadian world star and her husband again and again. Like René Angélil, Guy-Claude didn’t have to mortgage his house to finance Aline’s first record. And the final escape to Fred in Las Vegas is pure invention. The director in the Weltkino press booklet: “I made real events a little more suitable for the cinema.” Due to the corona, “Aline” will start in our cinemas on December 23, 2021, including in Union Bochum, Casablanca and Capitol Bochum as well as in Bambi Düsseldorf.
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