Celine Dion tells her story today by showing us yesterday

The memories are numerous, follow one another and respond to each other in the documentary I am : Celine Dion (I am : Celine Dion), the premiere of which took place Monday evening.

The voice of Maria Callas rings out at the beginning of the film, while we see Céline Dion, very young, who affirms in imperfect and candid English that she wishes to sing all her life.

After this extract from the play Carmen : Love is a rebellious bird, the public invites itself into Céline’s living room, with her twins who play documentary filmmakers and ask her what her favorite color is.

If you could go anywhere in the world, where would you go?asks one of his sons. Even though I saw the whole world, I saw nothing she replies, nostalgic.

This is just one of the multiple immersions into the singer’s daily life that we can experience during the documentary, which lets us see absolutely everything. Celine Dion never closes the door of her home, now open to her public to tell the truth. Finally.

If the interviews given by the world star last week already revealed the heaviness of the secret that has inhabited him for more than seventeen years, the documentary channel becomes the spokesperson for a truth that is both painful and tender, filled of vulnerability and at the height of the love that the public has always had for Céline Dion.

Sadness

She addresses on several occasions the infinite sadness that has inhabited her for almost two decades, each time she had to excuse some sort of infection when canceling a show.

From the start of the 102-minute documentary, we see Céline Dion lying on the ground on her side, her muscles tense. Then, paramedics rush to help him. We are then taken back to a year before, then we see Céline resting, at home with her two youngest boys, Eddy and Nelson.

Stiff person syndrome (RPS) first manifested itself as spasms in her voice, she explains, comparing her vocal cords to a rubber band that stretches less and less.

We only have to listen to the first ten minutes of I Am: Celine Dion to catch a glimpse of the sobbing global idol who declares he misses the music and the people.

Excerpts from interviews filmed for the documentary are presented alternating with highlights of her career where she addresses the same themes.

She expresses her lack of the public to which she no longer has access and we then see her, 20 years ago, naming the importance of her fans.

Repeating a complex choreography, almost in contortion, on archive images, we then see him during a physical rehabilitation session, stretching the same muscles, but this time with the aim of walking normally again.

In the same way, we look back on all the key moments of his personal and professional life. The funeral of René Angélil is shown to us while an extract of the singer performing All By Myself intercuts the video.

Then, we see the marriage of her brother when she was five years old, the birth of René-Charles, her first son. She speaks of her parents and their devotion with tenderness, melancholy at their sacrifices.

Strong, proud and funny

I don’t want people to hear thisadmits Céline Dion, crying after trying to sing in an interview, uttering a short note in a hoarse voice.

Even if most recent images show us Celine Dion deprived of her means, her sense of humor is highlighted time and again, both in excerpts from past interviews and in front of the documentary team.

We are invited to the warehouse where she keeps all her stage costumes and memorabilia. There, she tells us about the extent of her love for shoes and says she often wore shoes that didn’t fit her, simply because she found them beautiful. From size 6 to 10, give ’em to me! she says.

Furthermore, she says that she sees herself as an apple tree with branches that sag more and more. Her whole truth transcends words and crosses the screen when she explains that throughout her life she has offered apples well polished to her audience and that now, she refuses to make people wait in line in front of her if she has no more apples to give.

It was while recording the song Love Again (Love again) for the film of the same name as the tension rises, as much for the spectators as for Céline Dion.

After having given everything to sing in tune and well, his brain, overstimulated, causes him to have an RPS attack, of which we are shown the smallest details.

Tense, lying on a massage table, Céline Dion is no longer herself for a long time, while her care team watches over her and administers medication to release her muscular tensions, from her face to her feet.

Difficult, this extract tells us a lot about the pain of the great artist, but above all about her courage.

All gathered

Special events were organized for the premiere of the film, notably in Toronto, Montreal and New York, where Céline Dion was present, on the arm of her eldest son René-Charles.

In Montreal, the presentation of the film at the Théâtre Maisonneuve at Place des Arts was delayed, since the Montreal viewing was to start at the same time as that in New York and there were numerous interviews before the broadcast.

The images of Céline Dion on stage live from New York speaking to the public were broadcast in Montreal on a giant screen before the film was broadcast. The mayor of Charlemagne and many members of the Dion family were present.

Celine Dion thanked her fans, her children and her neurologist who replaced fear with hope.

A message in French, recorded beforehand by Céline Dion, was also broadcast before the start of the film. I couldn’t have made this documentary without the most beautiful song of my life, my children declared the singer.

I Am: Celin Dion by Irene Taylor Brodsky will be available worldwide on June 25 on Prime.