I saw the documentary about Celine Dion and it shocked me

People

In the documentary I am: Celine Dion to watch on Prime Video, Céline Dion reveals herself in a touching and sincere way about her life, her career and especially the illness that is gnawing at her.

I’m not a big Celine Dion fan, although I admire her voice and am grateful to her for winning us Eurovision in 1988. I grew up hating the album. Two that my mother played on repeat and My Heart Will Go On is, to my ears, one of the worst songs in cinema despite all the love I have for the film. Titanic.

In short, for me, Celine Dion is karaoke hits that we sing drunk at 11 p.m. and a character who often gives me a reason to laugh because her sometimes lunar outings remind me of a sort of Jean-Claude Van Damme of song.

However, the documentary I am: Celine Dion deeply touched me with his sincerity.

Available since Tuesday, June 25 on Amazon’s Prime Video platform, this 1h42 film immerses us in the star’s private life, between archive footage and on-camera testimony. Celine Dion invited award-winning documentary filmmaker Irene Taylor into her daily life, in order to lift the veil on her medical condition.

The director’s cameras filmed the most American of French speakers for a year in her sumptuous home in Las Vegas, where she lives as a recluse in the presence of her sons, almost absent from the documentary.

The 56-year-old Quebecer suffers from stiff person syndrome (SPR), a rare and painful neurological disease which still has no cure.

This autoimmune disease has symptoms of severe pain, spasms and difficulty moving. Often confused with Parkinson’s or multiple sclerosis, this disease affects one in a million people.

Celine without makeup

The documentary I am: Celine Dion is not one of those who paint a hagiographic portrait of their subject. The images show a person who is morally and physically broken. Since discovering her illness, she is now a woman who can no longer sing or dance without risking exhaustion. The time for flamboyance is now over.

While we were used to seeing her radiant, here she shows herself daily, without makeup, and we see that Céline Dion is a 55-year-old woman not so different from the others, with her wrinkles and her redness. A woman who bares herself and tells her story in front of the camera, between laughter and tears. A story between despair and resilience.

Celine Dion only knows how to sing. The one who started very young has devoted her life to her art. Today she is trying to tame her new voice, now hoarse by the spasms caused by her illness. Regardless of the pain and exhaustion, Céline Dion gives herself body and soul to sing again.

As we witness the recording of the soundtrack of the romantic comedy Love Again: A Little, A Lot, Passionately (2023), You can see the disappointment on her face as she listens to her voice, which is no longer quite the same. But as she says herself:

Such is his determination.

A traumatic scene

Irene Taylor’s documentary revolves around the artist’s daily life, interspersed with archive images. If Céline Dion sometimes takes pity on us when we see her diminished, it is above all by her resilience that she touches us, in living her life with this desire to never give up.

However, where the documentary feels like a punch in the face is during a (very long) passage where we witness, without filter, a crisis suffered by the singer. As she returns with her physiotherapist from a grueling studio session, Celine Dion is seized by contractions. Her entire body stiffens and she is paralyzed, her face twisted in pain. These unbearable images, which are accompanied by the sound of her moans, will not leave any viewer unscathed.