Dion’s life is laid bare in the truest sense in the new documentary directed by Irene Taylor (the Peabody Award-winning “Hear and Now” and Emmy-nominated “Beware the Slenderman” among her ouvere).
In the 100-minute film, the global superstar is usually sans makeup, her hair pulled back into a tight bun. She might be in her gorgeous Las Vegas compound in pajamas and bare feet one moment and, in another, she’s slowly putting on thick socks as she awaits a needle in her vein for a plasma exchange treatment.
Often, she is crying, both in frustration of how the extremely rare neurological disorder stiff person syndrome has held her voice and body hostage and also out of sadness from being robbed of her true joy: singing and performing.
The film, which plays in theaters nationwide starting June 21 and comes to Prime Video June 25, is affecting and raw – the latter not usually one associated with a diva of Dion’s renown.
But “I Am: Celine Dion” offers a portrait of a woman whose kindness is genuine, as Taylor confirms, and her fortitude commendable. It also showcases her family life now (with 13-year-old sons Nelson and Eddy at home), offers intimate footage of late husband René Angélil cutting the umbilical cord of their first born, René-Charles, now 23, as well as plenty of iconic performance clips that cement her legacy.
“I did not make the film to generate sympathy for her,” Taylor tells USA TODAY. “But it was impossible not to feel for this person.”
