Review: Inspired by Celine Dion, the musical drama ‘Aline’ is glossy, sincere and weird

It’s straightforward to overlook that films are sometimes simply any individual’s flighty dream filtered via a course of designed to make it palatable, solely that generally the hassle deepens the eccentricity. That’s not all the time a foul factor, even when, within the case of Valérie Lemercier’s shiny fable “Aline,” impressed by the lifetime of singer Celine Dion, the swoop of its romanticism and oddness can generally look like you’re eavesdropping on the non-public role-playing of a worshipful schoolgirl in a poster-lined bed room.

Lemercier is a César-winning French star of stage and display screen, and a director with a handful of breezy comedies below her belt, so we’re not speaking about some wide-eyed Dion fan paying tribute with an elaborate bauble earlier than returning to obscurity. And but for all of the methods “Aline” is a head-scratcher, it’s bought a kooky sincerity about expertise, fame, belief and love. Like a lush ballad that’s in some way each off-key and in complete concord, it’s in contrast to the rest on the market, and positively extra attention-grabbing in its swings and misses than lots of the machine-stamped movie star biopics littering the film panorama as of late.

Although Lemercier and co-screenwriter Brigitte Buc’s telling is a fictionalized account, it’s unmistakably Dion-ish in the important thing particulars: Aline Dieu (Lemercier) is the youngest of 14 born to a French Canadian couple of modest means. When Aline exhibits some beyond-her-years vocal chops in her early teenagers, she secures a file contract that introduces her to a decades-older, twice-married supervisor, right here named Man-Claude (Sylvain Marcel). As her star ascends, love blooms, and a singer who was as soon as a clumsy, friendless child finds achievement as a beloved icon, devoted spouse, caring mom and headlining queen of Las Vegas.

However to totally respect the earnest rhapsody of showbiz achievement and private happiness Lemercier has to supply, you must giggle and eyebrow-raise your well past a 50-something performer’s choice to play Aline beginning in childhood. Utilizing face-compositing results right here, scaled-up units and props there — all the time fairly clearly, by no means seamless — it’s merely an off-putting method when the early scenes already exhibit a sort of colourful playhouse appeal a few supportive household. Is Lemercier making an attempt to counsel Aline is an outdated soul in a lady’s physique? Is it filmmaker self-importance? A misplaced guess? It’s not precisely clear — nevertheless it’s flippin’ bizarre.

It does, nevertheless, get you used to the director/star’s unfussy, easy depiction of an open-hearted, goofy, hard-working expertise whose sensitivities are actual however whose dedication to creating it’s formidable. The dearth of music biz cynicism on this largely cheery rags-to-riches story is peculiarly refreshing — it’s a timeline of excessive factors, certain, however within the elegant widescreen tableau of ever-increasing wealth and fabulousness, Lemercier nonetheless finds satisfying dollops of quirk, heat and bonhomie. When you shake your head at occasions, you may also smile, and even really feel a measure of sympathy.

That being mentioned, in the event you’ve all the time appeared askance on the origins of Celine Dion and René Angélil’s relationship, you gained’t discover kinship in Lemercier’s generously scented model. Whereas the film acknowledges the way it appeared — Aline’s protecting mom, winningly performed by Danielle Fichaud, stands in for skeptics who should be gained over — it’s dedicated to Aline and Man-Claude as devoted, in-synch soul mates. (In actual life, Lemercier and Marcel are the identical age, which whereas serving to her uncomplicate the portrayal can be a little bit of a dodge.)

Don’t anticipate an entire lot from the usage of music, both, sadly, which toggles clumsily from diegetic ornament to commentary (“Nature Boy” is a motif) to hit-song 12 months marker. Within the no-nonsense live performance scenes, largely coming off like interludes or profession signposts quite than illuminations of character, Lemercier — sporting Dion’s extra well-known outfits, hairstyles and graceless however assured strikes — successfully lip syncs to Victoria Sio’s uncanny approximation of their topic’s virtuosic vary.

They did choose a becoming efficiency capper, nevertheless: the chanteuse’s lament “Ordinaire,” which is simply ridiculous sufficient in its humble bombast — “You see me as a goddess / I’m a girl” — to make sense as an immodestly declarative coda to this curious, hardly commonplace pop biography.