Considering we’ve got some time (perhaps, eternity) before Aline reaches the States, I’ve outlined the more important aspects of the film in hopes of communicating my casually transcendent experience with it. Watching Lemercier, I laughed, I cried, I rooted for Celine Aline as she got a makeover and attempted to seduce an old man. Although Celine Dion had nothing to do with this project, her zany energy is all the fuck over it.

Ultimately, I accepted the gonzo choice as one that could only have been made by a true Celine Dion fan.Īline works because it vibrates on the very same frequency as Celine Dion herself, who is, famously, a genuine weirdo: kooky, a little awkward, deeply earnest, unabashedly emotional, unafraid to do something freaky in the name of art. I thought briefly of the Ukrainian orphan who maybe was actually a 40-year old woman, and wondered if she had also been an inspiration to Lemercier.

Thunderstruck and thrown deep into the chasms of the Uncanny Valley, I struggled to accept what was happening.

We are looking at the face and body of a 57-year-old woman, shrunk down to the size of a child. No longer are we looking at the face and body of a child. The eye and the brain understand instantly that something is fundamentally wrong. Then, the camera angle changes, and we see Aline from the front. At first, we spot her from behind, looking every bit the normal child: normal size, normal hair, normal body proportions.

Mere seconds later, Aline is 4 or 5 years old, performing at an older sibling’s wedding. Instantly, and without any explanation, the film speeds back in time to 1932, the year that Aline/Celine’s parents met in Quebec and promptly began popping out their 14 children, culminating with the late-in-life, surprise addition of the supernaturally talented Aline. The movie, which features some of Dion’s songs but not her name, kicks off with a shot of Lemercier as later-in-life Dion, lying in her all-white bed in her all-white bedroom, with her children splayed around her, wearing an all-white outfit, white sunglasses, and white headphones, with a smattering of white votive candles lining the bed. Lemercier plays Aline Dieu (French for “Aline God”), foreshadowing the very slight artistic license taken with biographical details here. I realized I was in for something wonderfully berserk very early on in Aline, the unofficial Celine Dion biopic from writer-director-star Valérie Lemercier, which premiered at Cannes on Tuesday to a combination of bewilderment and delight. In which a 57-year-old Valérie Lemercier plays the singer at all ages of life, including 5 years old.

We, Two Boys by Aline Sax