How do you write, direct, and star in a Céline Dion biopic? According to Valérie Lemercier, you start by changing the singer’s name. A conversation with rachel_handler
Valérie Lemercier as Aline, from childhood to adulthood. Photo-Illustration: Susanna Hayward; Photo: Jean-Marie Leroy © Rectangle Productions/Gaumont/TF1 Films Production, De l’Huile/Productions Caramel Film Inc. /PCF Aline Le Film Inc./Belga Productions The film Aline, which premiered last year at Cannes to an audience both baffled and delighted and was deemed “scary” by The Guardian ahead of its wide release, defies simple explanation.
It sounds like you were less drawn to her talent and celebrity and more to the story behind it, the people around her. It would have been difficult. In Quebec, there are a lot of comedians who love to make fun of the age difference between her and René. People were waiting for me to be sarcastic in the movie, maybe even more than the five movies I’ve made before. But that was not the story I wanted to tell. I wrote it as an homage.No. It was not a joke. It’s just close to Dion. Some people really are named Dieu.
When Aline doesn’t know how to be a woman, how to dance, when she has the wrong teeth — when she’s in the dentist’s chair with an open mouth — I didn’t want to make a small girl do that. It’s fine to laugh about my own maladroit. I think it’s not funny to do that to a poor little girl.It’s not my own face on a child’s body. It’s all me. When I’m at school, they put me at a big desk with papers bigger than normal ones and a big pen. When I’m signing records, we used big records.
There’s a theme running throughout the film about Aline being physically awkward; someone refers to her as “weird face, no grace.” There’s a makeover montage and a lot of conversation about her looks and the need to “fix” them. How did you address that in a way that didn’t feel insulting to you or to Céline?
A lot of Céline Dion’s bigger hits, like “The Power of Love” and “All Coming Back to Me Now,” are missing from the film. But you do have a lot of her bigger covers, like “River Deep, Mountain High” and “Nature Boy.” Were you unable to get the rights to some of those other songs? So when you filmed those concert scenes, were you singing in front of an audience or lip-syncing to another track?
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