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I Am: Céline Dion review – an earnest love letter from one of the last true divas


The queen of power ballads lets fans in on her private battle with stiff-person syndrome in a new Amazon Prime documentary.

Minutes into I Am: Céline Dion, the beloved singer’s remarkably unguarded documentary chronicling her struggle with a rare neurological disorder, the queen of power ballads is on the floor, in fetal position, surrounded by staff. SPS causes muscle stiffness and sometimes full spasms, the brain’s misguided response to overstimulation via loud sound and stress – a particularly cruel fate for a woman so attuned to the power of emotions, so eager to summon bombastic sentiment, that she named her company, a co-producer on the film, Feeling Productions. At the risk of being cliche, I could only think of the word brave while watching an international superstar consent, via grunt, to be filmed completely out of control of her body as the spasms immobilize her – her safety managed by a team of specialists, her hands mangled into claws, her face frozen in grimace, glistening with tears.

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