Criticism of ‘Love Again’, great love ballad with Sam Heughan

That one day before the trospid appointment (increasingly) with the Eurovision Song Contest, this premiere sublimation of the romantic overcoming drama via the tempo, the love ballad narrative and the presence of Céline Dion It is quite a declaration of principles and, depending on how you look at it in these times of extreme cynicism and innocuous posturing, a defense of what has always been so ridiculed (and ridiculous in the wrong hands) that is a sad love song that ends up appealing to the hope. The lyrics and the music with which he handles himself on stage (everything beautiful and full of clichés that every fan of, I don’t know, Nora Ephron’s cinema expects) ‘Love again’ couldn’t be more prone to wrinkling ( cynically) the nose and look over the shoulder at a film that never hides its cards and its condition and that opts for an endearingly old-fashioned tone (as much as its urban landscapes seem the most hipster in the world), far from self-parody (little hoods and wolves of unfortunate recent memory come to mind) and, above all, self-indulgence. ‘Love again’ is a great song, sweetened with tears and with odes to the power of love that heals everything and forgives everything, from the Dion who was ignored in Eurovision and who today would be humiliated by postmodernism older than garlic soup of the howling

Based on a German success, which I have not seen and which never reached our screens, the feature film, produced by Céline Dion herself (in fact, she endorses the film’s premise to exorcise the death of her sentimental partner in real life), Aptly intones a part of a light comedy of entanglements and misunderstandings (a ‘Secret Admirer’ for thirty-somethings subscribed to the Cosmopolitan), but even more themes that in other novels and films screeched and clashed, those of which were cloying to the point of diabetic coma ‘Message in a bottle’ and ‘PS: I love you’. Because, between meetings, disagreements, looking at mobile phones in posh cafeterias and chats in the dim light, ‘Love again’ is once again in the filmography of the very interesting (and very measured in the staging: the conversations between the character of Sam Heughan and Céline Dion herself) Jim Strouse a journey towards the light not only from the darkness (the death of the loved one) but in the company of it to try to understand and overcome it. It is true that ‘Love again’ is far from the wonderful ‘Life without Grace’ that this director, Strouse, introduced us to. She ends up being a (spoiled) slave to the romantic soap opera and those traps that from time to time disarm whoever writes this (read –or not- the review of ‘Last Christmas’, also very much in this style), and yet in those small details (excellently planned by Jim Strouse) in which the characters discover that loving again can ease pain, but that pain will always be with us, that the dead will always be part of the lyrics of songs that will not stop moving us, the tape wins our sympathy. Not the Eurovision twelve points or douze points; We reserve those for Dion’s stellar comeback.

For decipherers of what Dion’s “Because you loved me” contains

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DATA SHEET

Address: jim strouse Distribution: Priyanka Chopra, Sam Heughan, Celine Dion, Lydia West, Russell Tovey Country: USA Year: 2023 Release date: 12–5-2023 Gender: Romantic comedy Script: jim strouse Duration: 104 min.

Synopsis: What would happen if a random text message led you to the love of your life? As she tries to get over the loss of her fiancé, Mira Ray sends a series of romantic messages to her old phone number… unaware that the number had been reassigned to Rob Burns’ new work phone.