The Flop House's first ever foreign-language film. That's right, everybody: French Canada is in the House! Regular Canada need not apply.
Official Show Notes[]
On this episode, we discuss Aline, the movie about a French Canadian diva who becomes wildly popular, marries her manager, plays Vegas, and sings My Heart Will Go On from the film Titanic, but is NOT Celine Dion. She’s Aline. ALINE. Oh, and also she has an adult face on a kid’s body. Y’know. Aline.
Movie Summary[]
Premise[]
[...]
Final Judgments[]
“There is stuff in here that legit worked for me, like... not that I thought it was particularly interesting but I'm like, "oh, these actors are putting on good performance and it's kinda fun to see this CliffsNotes on someone that I don't really know anything about." But all of that is so overshadowed by the weirdness of one specific choice, and a choice that, like, is gone half-way through the movie but still casts a long shadow over the rest of it. ” —Good-Bad, but just watch the first hour (Dan) @1:03:00
“It manages to, despite having some kind of interesting scenes and some interesting performances, it just ends up being very bland. ” —Bad-Bad (Stuart) @1:04:15
“There's this weird energy that's running through the first third of the movie, and that energy is a grown-up playing a kid and her family — 'cause her family is the most fun part of the movie. Like, how's there tons of siblings and they're all a little goofy and her mom is such a big character. And all of that kinda falls away and eventually just becomes almost like an acted-out documentary about Celine Dion which is not to my taste.” —Bad-Bad (Elliott) @1:04:55
Episode Summary[]
Introductions @00:35
The first of many questionable French Impressions @00:40
“For decades and decades she lived with the mystery of how French people have sex. So please, so that I can tell my grandma's ghost in a seance, French people: write in, tell us how you do it.” —Elliott @41:25
Paganini Horror (1988) by Luigi Cozzi (Dan) @1:30:40
Decision to Leave (2022) by Park Chan-wook (Stuart) @1:33:15
After Life (1988) by Hirokazu Koreeda (Elliott) @1:34:15
Stinger[]
Dan:
All our bases are covered, all three bases. For the purposes of this —
Elliott:
All three bases are belong to us.
Dan:
— home is not — does not count as a base.
Elliott:
No no, home is just an idea, it's a concept.
Dan:
Home is a state of mind: it's where the heart is.
Stuart:
It is!?
Dan:
Yeah.
Elliott:
It's where I wanna be, but I guess I'm already there
Stuart:
That's where I left it.
Dan:
San Francisco?
Stuart:
Mm hmm.
Dan:
Ok, well, Stuart lives in San Francisco now, guys.
Stuart:
Uh huh. Mola Ram took out my heart and put it in San Francisco —
Elliott:
Put it in an envelope
Stuart:
— "San Franciso Treat", they call it!
Elliott:
—that just says, "to San Francisco."
Dan:
Do you think that's what happened to Tony Bennett?
Stuart:
Mm hmm.
Elliott:
Yeah, Mola Ram was — the original version was a duet with Mola Ram. "I left your heart in San Francisco". And then they, you know — there was tensions between the two of them and Tony Bennett ended up just recording it on his own.
Dan:
Yeah, eventually broke up. UM —
Elliott:
But then, Mola Ram told that story to Paul Schrader and it became the inspiration for the movie Heartbeeps.