Dalida (2017)

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

One of those movie experiences that is so good it makes you realize you've been grading everything else on a curve.

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

"Dalida" is a French film from 2016, so still a relatively new work at this point, and this one was written and directed by Lisa Azuelos. Well, the book it is based on was of course not written by her, but the screenplay was and the film has the potential to become one of the filmmaker's most known career efforts, maybe even the number one. A lot of that has to do with lead actress Sveva Alviti, who carries the film strongly as she is in pretty much every single scene and it is definitely a breakthrough performance here. No denying that her looks help too just like Valentina Carli's, even if she is sadly not in that many scenes. This is a biopic about the singer Dalida, who was born in Cairo and had gigantic success in Europe thanks to her powerful voice. Of course she existed in reality too, even if I must admit I don't think I have heard of her before or I probably have and I just don't remember the name. But her music was good and I heard songs that I recognized from the Leningrad Cowboys and from the Tarantino film Kill Bill. The way they treated her music in here was interesting and it definitely wasn't as frequent as I thought it would be. At least in terms of what you see and in terms of the story. Instead they included Dalida's songs as voice-over on truly many occasions in this film. For me the approach was working.In terms of plots and story-telling, the focus was on Dalida and the men in her life, her lovers, but also her brother. We find out how so many of them end up dying by committing suicide and how every time something inside Dalida dies, even if her relationships with these men may have been finished already at that point. I think all the actors did a good job and the ensemble performance is one of the film's biggest strengths. But sadly, in terms of story-telling, there were weaknesses. Sometimes it felt as if entire scenes were missing despite the long runtime and it hurts the film's flow on several occasions. One example would be the scene when she basically begs her freshly divorced boyfriend to marry her, to get her pregnant, so she can be a housewife and mother, but he refuses and one scene later we find out she does not love him anymore even, so I wonder how much time may have passed between these extremely contradictory scenes. Another example is the argument with her brother during the holiday celebrations in which she defends her considerably younger lover (for times back then) and which is so heavy that he quits the party. And in the next scene, they seem to be so close as if nothing happened at all while talking about her boyfriend as if she does not care one bit about him. This is also the pregnancy scene that results in an abortion, a conscious decision that backfires later on and hurts Dalida's mental state even more that she will never become a mother.But all in all, I think the positive aspects of this are far more frequent than the negative and I believe this is rock-solid execution from start to finish. The music, acting (especially the lead performance), the real character references and also the visual side make up for occasional structure deficits in story-telling. It certainly one of the better recent French films I have seen and why stellar moments and greatness are not really existent here, I enjoyed the film from start to finish. People should check this one out and if they have a stronger connection with Dalida than I do, then I would not be surprised to see this one on several Best-of-the-year lists. If only the music component could have been depicted more convincingly and with this I am also talking about the title character's rise to stardom, which felt truly rushed. Anyway, all in all I give this film a thumbs-down and I suggest you check it out if you get a chance too. Worth seeing for sure.

Every biopic is a risk for the viewer. because he has his version about the life of the lead character. maybe memories. and a lot of impressions. "Dalida" is one of rare biopics who escapes from the circle of clichés and full of good intentions sketches. maybe, because it has the right director and the ideal lead actress. maybe for the beautiful elegance for present a chain of tragedies, hard work, fragility and need of happiness. maybe for the science to give to you the feeling to see a docu-drama. the admirable thing - it is not a film for the fans of Dalida. it is not exactly story of a precise existence. it is far to be a bitter fairy tale. it has the magnificent gift to be a film about chance and the price of it, about choices and about a woman looking for herself. all in a manner who, I believe, is more than inspired.

'Dalida' is a biopic of Yolanda Gigliotti, a former Miss Egypt of Italian stock, who - although I had never heard of her before seeing this film at the 2017 Edinburgh International Film Festival - achieved great success as a singer and actress in the 1950s-80s.With a couple of nods to her childhood in Cairo (which seemed to consist mainly of her grizzling), the story opens as the young woman sings in a radio variety show. From then on the film could be a TV movie adaptation of a Danielle Steel novel: the overnight success, the glamorous love affairs, the scandal, the suicide attempts... if it were not based on true events it would be easy to dismiss this film as being extremely predictable.I would have appreciated more explanation about certain things: why, for instance, was it necessary for the baby Yolanda to have her eyes bound for forty days? And why - after the huge success of a concert in which she moved into disco - do we next see her, a few years later, alone and suicidal in her Paris home - what happened in the interim to bring her to this low? Other things struck me as odd: for instance, would a woman going for an abortion really wear full face make-up to do so?I probably would have appreciated the film more if I were familiar with Dalida's music. As it is, I was surprised by the number of French-language songs she sang that were familiar to me in their English language versions; and I am now haunted by the emotional 'Je suis malade', which is gorgeous - in fact, the music is probably the best reason to watch this film.

I went to see this with my wife (I'm American, she is French) primarily in order to please her and thinking that this would be a weepy, melodramatic biopic of interest only to hard-core fans of the late Dalida.Guess what? I actually found it to be a quite enjoyable film, of obvious particular interest to those who know about the portrayed singer's huge professional success (she is relatively unknown in the US and the UK but was a tremendous star throughout Europe, the Middle East and Japan) shadowed by an enormous amount of personal tragedy in her life, but pretty damn good all on its own as well.The actress who portrays Dalida is a dead ringer for her and even though it is obvious that she is lip-syncing the songs, her ability to imitate Dalida's gestures, both on and off stage, is stunning. The supporting case also does a very good job and the director carefully stays within the boundaries of what could have otherwise been a Hollywood tear-jerker type film, never descending into pure melodrama.If you don't know about Dalida, this film is worth a look -- if you do know about her, you should definitely see it.