She has just canceled her concerts until spring 2024, for health reasons. Failing to be fit enough to go on stage, Celine Dion is the heroine of a romantic comedy, of which she also signs for the soundtrack five unreleased titles. A small consolation prize for his fans. The Quebecer even steals the show from the lovebirds, whose idyll, sewn with white thread, leaves the hearts of the spectators in a flat encephalogram. Remake of a hit German comedy, Love Again: a little, a lot, passionately, sank, like the Titanic, at the bottom of the American box office. It was shot between late 2020 and early 2021 in London. Long before the singer revealed that she was suffering from chronic and painful stiffness. A rare neurological disease that forced her to cancel her tour.
The interpreter of My Heart Will Go On plays his own role with surprising self-mockery. And finds herself, in spite of herself, playing matchmaker between a jaded journalist and a bereaved illustrator. Mira (Priyanka Chopra-Jonas from the series Citadel) lost her fiancé in a traffic accident. Inconsolable, she continues to send text messages detailing his moods on the laptop of the deceased. She does not know that the number has been reassigned to Rob, music critic (Sam Heughan, the handsome kid from Outlander, rather charismatic except here). The Scot who went into exile in New York, abandoned at the altar by his fiancée, is swimming in professional purgatory. Her editor-in-chief commissioned a portrait of Celine Dion. An outrage for those who swear by alternative rock. Rob believes that the interpreter of Pour que tu m'aimes encore makes a shameless and fallacious propaganda of love and love at first sight.
A diva half-shrink half-life coach
However, Rob is not insensitive to the distress that emanates from Mira's messages. Rob sets out to meet this correspondent. And finds an unexpected ally in Celine Dion who exalts her throughout their interviews to open her heart. Half-life coach, half-psychologist, the singer gives him a masterclass on love based on her discography and her great story with René Angélil.
Celine Dion recounts her first kiss, the pain of grief with beautiful sincerity. Above all, she is amused by her diva image. Able to sharply reframe a journalist who questions her about the relevance of her work, she replies: "What a funny question. Do you wonder why your readers keep going through the articles of a white fifties. If your work crosses the ages, it is because it is timeless."
Towards Rob, she proves to be a strict teacher. Black suit. Severe bun. She sips her tea on the carpet with her "student". These improbable and deliciously meta moments of complicity are the best moments of James Strouse's bluette. With the appearance of the real husband of Priyanka Chopra-Jonas: the singer Nick Jonas plays a bad date too insistent.
Intact vocal power
At the risk of disappointing the apprentice journalists, never any press briefing, timed to the second, turns into a cuddle therapy session where the star comforts you. And even less after being rebuked at a press conference for not cutting off his phone.
It is less the disbelief than the boredom aroused by the adventures of Mira and Rob. Rather than confess to her that he receives the text messages intended for her fiancé, he makes her believe in the powers of divine chance. Secrecy that will be reproached to him later. From love at first sight too fast to breaking up on a misunderstanding... Everything is predictable and lacks twists or misunderstandings.
Remains to awaken from its marshmallow torpor the spectator, the soundtrack. Compilation of Celine Dion's hits completed by five unpublished compositions. In Love Again, the tutelary title, the strings and the piano take the lion's share, supported by a chorus in an acoustic philosophy. The rest is more pop. The artist's stamp is more doctored. The vocal power of the Quebecer, however, remains intact. Fans will recognize themselves. A less discerning ear may judge that these ballads form an indistinguishable tunnel of exhortations to love. Not sure that in this quintet is a new classic of the artist's repertoire.
For her debut on the big screen, Celine Dion deserved better than this film between the feature film that we launch on a plane and the Christmas TV movie. Enough to regret the fantasy and freshness of the fake biopic dedicated to him by Valerie Lemercier with Aline.