This isn’t a film about Celine Dion, the iconic pop diva who had a relationship with her substantially older manager. This is the story of Aline, an iconic pop diva who had a relationship with her substantially older manager. Totally different, and actually quite a lot of campy fun, if the trailer is to be believed.
Aline follows the rise of one “Aline Dieu” to pop stardom, in what the trailer calls “a fiction freely inspired by the life of Celine Dion”. Okaaayyyy… And it’s written and directed by Valérie Lemercier, who also plays Aline from age 5 to age 50. Wait, what?
The real Celine Dion was born into a French-Canadian family in Quebec, and become a teen star before winning the 1988 Eurovision Song Contest. She released her first English-language album in 1990 and went on to sell more than 200 million records, win five Grammys and warble her way to a string of number one hits. My Heart Will Go On from the film Titanic is one of the best-selling singles of all time. It’s the second-best-selling single by a woman, behind only I Will Always Love You by Whitney Houston, who’ll also get the biopic treatment in 2022.
Dion really did marry her manager, René Angélil, whom she met when she was 12 and he was in his 30s. They later married when she was 26, and they had three kids. Angélil died in 2016.
Aline opens in the US on Jan. 21 after coming out in France and at the Cannes film festival this year.
