Move Over Celine! 'Aline' Faux Biopic of Celine Dion Electrifies Cannes

A faux biopic about Celine Dion has rocked the Cannes Film Festival this week. Called "Aline," the film begins with a disclaimer: "This film is inspired by the life of Celine Dion. It is, however, a work of fiction."

It has not been authorized by Dion, and only some of her music is used in the film. Yes, it includes "My Heart Will Go On," which is seen in a recreation of Dion's performance of the song at the Oscars.

"'Aline' is more of an homage – perhaps the shiniest Lifetime movie to premiere at Cannes – than a roman à clef. From the opening credits, the movie admits to being inspired by Dion's career, and it often plays like a paint-by-the-numbers biopic," writes Variety.

It was called by the New York Times this week as "a film so unlike anything at Cannes that it feels out of place ... that is, until it steers into its eccentricities so hard that it somehow boomerangs back into auteurism."

One of its eccentricities is that its titular character is played by the film's 57-year-old actress-director Valérie Lemercier, who plays Dion "at every age of her life, including as a 5-year-old child," writes the Times.

"Shrunk to Hobbit size and Facetuned into near-oblivion, Lemercier scampers, preens and unnerves. I've never seen anything quite like it: Not 'PEN15,' not John C. Reilly at the beginning of 'Walk Hard,' not even a fully grown�Martin Short playing a psychotic 10-year-old in 'Clifford,'" writes Times reporter Kyle Buchanan. "As a cinematic presence, Preteen Aline looks less like our main character and more like she's ready to terrorize Vera Farmiga in the next "Conjuring" movie."

After seeing the film, Vulture looked into Lemercier's career. She is a singer, writer, director and actress "with a blind, sort of mad confidence" that reporter Rachel Handler finds inspiring. "She's previously given this sort of unofficial-biopic treatment to Princess Diana. She also made a strange movie wherein she plays a�racist white woman�who develops some kind of skin condition that turns her Black (?), which sounds potentially�problematique�in the exact way that privileged French people tend to grapple with race."

Vulture continues that the film is framed around Dion's relationship with her late husband René Angélil, named Guy-Claude. In a cheeky meta-moment, he calls her "Celine" when he first meets her, only to be corrected that it is "Aline" by her mother. That he was much older when they meet – he was in his 30s, she was a teenager, the effect is mitigated by Lemercier's digitized face when they first meet. "The movie sells this relationship so hard that, by the end, I was utterly despondent when Aline and Guy-Claude were parted by the cold hands of death," adds Handler in Vulture.

The film includes highlights from Dion's career: "like her Caesar's Palace residency, her Oscars performance, her�weepy TV interview�where she nearly admits to her controversial relationship with René, her meeting and eventual deep attachment to her�gay makeup artist/stylist�who accompanies her everywhere, and the period during which she was not allowed to speak due to damaged vocal chords."

The reception was overwhelmingly positive. As the credits rolled," Variety reports, "the premiere audience whooped with approval. The standing ovation for 'Aline' lasted for a full five minutes."

"I was actually crying," said one French attendee at the film's bittersweet conclusion.

"Aline" does not yet have distribution in the United States.