In Aline, Valérie Lemercier delivers her very personal and romanticized vision of the life of singer Céline Dion. But to what extent has the actress and director mixed reality and fiction? Find out whether or not the scenario faithfully transcribes the fairy tale of the interpreter of Pour que tu m’aimes encore.
A huge success when it was released in cinemas in 2020, Aline is broadcast for the first time on TF1 this Sunday evening. Retracing the life and career of Céline Dion, Valérie Lemercier’s film willingly takes certain liberties to give a comedy feel to this formidable and touching success story. But how do you know if what you see on the screen is true or false? To find out for sure, we trusted the expertise of Agnès Gaudet, journalist for The Journal de Montréal, which has followed the star’s career since its beginnings and analyzed this true-false biopic from every angle.
Did Celine Dion’s career start with a cassette?
According to the film Aline, it was a very small audio cassette wrapped in red and then sent to René Angélil which would be at the origin of Céline Dion’s impressive career. Is this really the case? According to Agnès Gaudet, it is authentic. Our colleague specifies that it is the song It was only a dream which was recorded on this tape, and that the father of the future star would indeed have called the impresario saying to him: “I know that you don’t didn’t listen to him, otherwise you would have called back straight away!” However, part of this sequence is the pure product of Valérie Lemercier’s imagination:
“That a young Céline forgot to take off her ice skates before going to the meeting with the impresario, like the character of Aline, is absurd.”
Celine Dion’s lucky charm: myth or reality?
In the screenplay written by Brigitte Buc and Valérie Lemercier, Aline has a lucky charm: a gold coin that her father gave her and which is very linked to the history of her family. The singer’s father reportedly found it in the 1930s and later passed it on to his daughter for good luck. If this story is false, Céline Dion would nevertheless be used to carrying a charm with her, as the Quebec specialist explains:
“In real life, Céline, who is superstitious, often slipped a five-cent coin into her shoe for luck, after she found one on the ground dated 1968, her year of birth, before her first concert. “
How did René’s marriage proposal to Céline go?
A sequence of Aline taking place in Rome shows us the touching marriage proposal that René would have made to Céline. In the 1990s, while the star’s tour passed through Italy, her manager thought up an original way to ask for her hand: he hid a ring in an ice cream cone! Is this really how things happened? Not really. Agnès Gaudet takes stock:
“Aline’s marriage proposal was completely imagined by Valérie Lemercier (Aline). René Angélil never hid an engagement ring in an ice cream cone handed to Céline. His proposal was made discreetly in private. “
Still around this wedding, Valérie Lemercier’s biopic offers us a rather amusing sequence during which Aline, in a wedding dress, is forced to leave the house through the window, her dress being too bulky to pass through the door. This is still a fictional sequence:
“Obviously this is pure invention. The grandiose wedding of Céline and René required enormous preparations.”
Did the argument between Céline Dion’s mother and René Angélil happen like in the film Aline?
One of Aline’s most striking sequences shows us an argument between the singer’s mother and the latter’s manager. Understanding that a romance is forming between her daughter and the impresario, the star’s mother decides to confront the man by interrupting him while he is in the middle of a roulette game. A particularly funny anthology sequence follows. And if it is still an invention, a certain tension nevertheless existed:
“This confrontation never took place in the lives of Céline and René. However, Maman Dion would have one day mentioned: ‘Céline was my princess. I hoped for a prince for her’.”
How was Celine Dion informed of her father’s death?
In the film Aline, when the singer learns that her father has just died, it is almost by accident, only a few seconds before giving a concert. Then again, while things didn’t quite turn out that way, the reality isn’t much different from what we see on screen. The Quebec journalist, who has followed Celine Dion since 1981, revealed what really happened:
“Céline Dion did not learn of the death of her father because of an indiscreet technician a few moments before entering the stage as we see for Aline, but rather a few hours before the show. When she went on stage, she announced to the spectators that her father had just died, that it would be difficult and that she was dedicating the show to him. Later, she burst into tears in her dressing room.”
If Valérie Lemercier took certain liberties with the facts, it is to better pay tribute to the star she admires. In the press kit which accompanied the release of Aline, the French filmmaker specified:
“We allowed ourselves to deal with reality, to invent details. I had to construct this story with maximum precision, but with a step aside, a few meters away, respectful of it…”
A mixture of fiction and true story, Aline is ultimately a touching and very successful romantic comedy, which we certainly do not shy away from.
Sources : The Montreal Journal, Slate
2023-11-05 23:03:31
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