This movie suffers for the typical problem of biopics, the attempt to stuff a lifetime material into a couple of hours. Moreover, Dalida's life was very full, both of joy and tragic events and squeezing everything into two hours was not accomplished successfully.

Dalida was born Iolanda Gigliotti from an Italian couple that had moved to Egypt. She herself moved to France in the mid-50s to improve her career that had started in Egypt. Her first success was the song Bambino and she was helped by her first husband, a much older and successful radio producer.

After her divorce, she managed her career very successfully, not only in France but in several countries, since she spoke several languages and was a talented actress and dancer. Unfortunately her private life was marred by a series of scandals (leaving her husband after a month of marriage, a much younger lover, etc...) and by a string of lovers who committed suicide, starting with Italian singer Luigi Tenco.

Labelled as "the last diva", Dalida managed to be successful until the end of her career, when she slipped into a suicidal depression herself. This rather depressing story is narrated in a most annoying series of flashbacks and muddled timeline. Sveva Alviti (a total unknown for me) does a great job as Dalida, unfortunately her look changes very little from Dalida's youth to her last years: Dalida killed herself at 54 but in the movie she looks perennially in her her early 30s.

For so many people around the world Dalida was an amazing, life- changing icon, a woman with a powerful voice who brought joy to so many people even while her own life was mired in tragedy. Dalida's life was the stuff movies are made of. What a disappointment then that this movies makes her seem so lifeless.

Perhaps the problem here is that the filmmakers had so much to work with. Dalida had a 31 year career as a superstar, constantly remaking herself to stay on top of trends and to give new material to her fans. However instead of focusing on her career this biopic chooses to examine her through the lens of her romantic relationships many of which ended in tragedy (three of her lovers would commit suicide). As an entry way into the private life of Dalida it's not a bad start, but the script is frankly a mess. Men enter and exit Dalida's life quickly, with all the juicy material usually glossed over in montage backed by one of Dalida's songs. And after awhile these affairs start to drain the life force out of the movie. If you only had the film to go on Dalida is just a simple woman who only wants to get married and have children but keeps picking the wrong men. Her singing career seems almost incidental. At one point, Dalida tells a spiritual adviser that she feels whole when she's singing but we never see that. Instead the film treats Dalida as passive in her own career, a woman who doesn't really care for the work and instead has been built up by two men: her husband Lucien Morrise and her brother Orlando.

Sveva Alviti has a beautiful face, but is missing that star quality that made Dalida someone you couldn't take your eyes off of. Everyone else is passable. The costumes and techs are glossy and it's fun to watch them and count the passing years through the background scenery (little attempts are made to age Alviti up with makeup). The best part of the movie though are Dalida's own songs which are used generously within the film and make it almost like a longform music video.

"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.