Valérie Lemercier: “Aline is both a faithful and fantasized vision of Céline Dion”

In the summer of 2021, Valérie Lemercier packed the Croisette with her “true/false” biopic. To be (re)watched this weekend on TF1.

Aline should have been released at the end of 2020 in cinemas, but the film was postponed to November 10, 2021, following the winter re-containment. Between the two, in July, Valérie Lemercier presented his funny project on the Croisette, out of competition. The opportunity to share our interview with the actress-director published in issue 512 (with David Fincher on the cover), accompanied by some photos of the actress-director’s climb to the top and her Quebec actors: Roc Lafortune, Danielle Fichaud, Valerie Lemercier, Sylvain Marcel and Pascale Desrochers, all excellent in the film. They were also entitled to a long “standing ovation” at the end of the screening.

We are sharing all this again to wait until the first clear broadcast ofAline, Sunday on TF1. The film will be followed by a documentary on the singer’s career.

With Aline, Valérie Lemercier tries something new: the fan biopic (review)

In Aline, Valérie Lemercier acts like a child, cries, laughs, loves, sings (for real), dances (for real). His most accomplished role and film so that you still love him.

Celine Dion seems far from your dramatic and even musical universe.
Not really. Like her, I come from a large family, I was self-conscious about my appearance, I had terrible teeth… I have listened to her a lot since 1995. During her husband’s funeral, in 2016, I was touched by her solitude, I don’t know why… In short, a year later, I said on the radio, as a joke, that my next project would be a Céline Dion biopic. The same evening, my production designer, Emmanuelle Duplay, called me to tell me that it was a great idea.

Aline comes from the reappropriation by you of a well-known and caricatured personality to whom you restore a certain nobility. Was this your goal in reuniting for writing with Brigitte Buc, your co-author of Royal Palace! ?
Brigitte had a decisive role in advising me to change the names. From that moment on, we were able to take liberties, invent lots of things… Calling the film Aline also freed me from the weight of physical resemblance at all costs. There is only one Celine Dion, not two. When I look Cloclofor example, I do not see Claude François but Jérémie Renier.

The distancing that you mention is paradoxical because the film is very documented, realistic in a certain way.
I read everything, saw everything about her for months to feed the story. Aline is a film “Celine Dion perfume” as I usually say. I warned my collaborators from the start that I wanted people to like the character. Anything that didn’t look like Celine Dion or that she wouldn’t have done, I didn’t keep. It is a vision that is both faithful and fantasized.

Yes because Aline looks like you too. There is this moment when you appear as a child on TV which evokes a famous sketch for Les Nuls or an injection scene which seems to refer to Les Visiteurs…
I play children in all my shows, this is not particular to the Nuls sketch. So I didn’t think about it, any more than I thought about the Visitors. We have one thing that particularly brings us together: the stage, and the physical sensations it provides. I know when you sweat when you come out. If it had been necessary
assign the role to someone else, I would have been annoyed. But since I don’t play that much, I reserved it for myself! (Laughs.)

On arrival, the film is surprisingly benevolent and shows a star obsessed with her cushy married life with her husband, Guy-Claude, an evocation of the famous René Angélil…
I find this couple touching and what they have built together, too. At 12, Céline said on TV sets that she wanted to be an international star. René, who was quite a visionary, mortgaged his own house to produce his first record. He later had a theater built in Las Vegas for her, it’s crazy, right?

You place René Angélil on a pedestal. Did you idealize him and, if so, why?
I am convinced that he was a very good man. I read the enormous book dedicated to him and spoke with people who knew him and who said nothing else. I dream of him. He is someone I would have liked to meet and have by my side. My life might have been smoother.

Aline is less a biopic than a fable about the couple seen through the prism of the star system. What were your inspirations?
I rewatched a few biopics, Amadeus, Cloclobut my main inspiration was The fabulous destiny of Amelie Poulain. I find Jeunet’s management of ellipses and the passing of time wonderful.

Aline is the most expensive French film of the year. The absence of big names at your side suddenly seems like a risky bet, but also proves your faith in the story you are telling.
I have always believed in stories. Everyone knows that apart from Catherine Frot and Fabrice Luchini, no one fills theaters in France on their name alone. But behind Aline, the star is still Céline Dion, ten thousand times more famous than me! (Laughs.)

Aline: How Valérie Lemercier became “Céline Dion”