Google's my friend, huh? I had Candelair 1.0.8 all along. But thanks for reminding me of it, because now that I tried deactiving it, the remote ended up working.
With 1.0.3 I had the same problems as everybody, but now the new VLC does not react to any of the buttons on the aluminum Apple remote. My OS X version is 10.6.2, and I installed VLC twice just to be sure (the 32-bit Intel version). Any ideas?