HEART GOES ON
Grief plus Celine Dion make for a romantic comedy to message your friends about…
This is a romcom and it’s meant to warm people’s hearts and make them feel happy and hopeful,’ says writer/director Jim Strouse, on Zoom from his Brooklyn home. ‘But there’s a very sincere undercurrent of living with grief and how one does that responsibly. One of my heroes as a filmmaker, writer and just a wit is Elaine May [A New Leaf, The Heartbreak Kid].’
Handpicked for the project by Sony Screen Gems bigwig Scott Strauss, indie filmmaker Strouse (People Places Things, The Incredible Jessica James) also had Rob Reiner and Nora Ephron in mind while prepping Love Again. Their films, he says, stand as the Mount Rushmore of the genre, and Love Again boasts a high-concept premise: Mira (Priyanka Chopra Jonas) deals with the loss of her fiancé by texting heavy-hearted messages to his number, not realising that it’s now been reassigned to journalist Rob (Sam Heughan). Rob is hardly a romantic – profiling Celine Dion, he asks, ‘Do you really believe in all these things you sing?’ – but he falls in love with Mira’s words, and orchestrates a meeting.
Wait, back up... Yes, Teasers did indeed say Celine Dion, who here makes her acting debut, playing herself. ‘You obviously know nothing about [love],’ is her reply to Rob’s aforementioned question, and she becomes something of a love guru for Rob and Mira’s burgeoning relationship. In the German movie that Love Again is a remake of, SMS für Dich, based on Sofie Cramer’s novel, this part in the story features a fictional star. But Strouse and Sony set their sights high.
‘We always wanted a real artist,’ smiles the director, who explains how landing Dion took many months. Thankfully it was worth the wait. ‘She’s a natural performer and there was no ego. It was always, “How can I do it better? Let’s go again. What do you need this time?” It’s a funny, warm performance. I researched her life a lot and tried to write it in a way that it would feel as natural as possible for her. There’s a lot of her own love story in it, with René [Angélil, Dion’s husband and manager, who died in 2016].’
As a huge bonus, Love Again will feature music from Dion, though Strauss won’t be drawn on how much of it is new. ‘There is original music, but I can’t talk too much,’ he says. And will a certain classic associated with a hugely popular film that moved viewers to oceans of tears play a part? ‘It was a real process figuring out what’s in, what’s not,’ is all that he’ll say. ‘But Celine’s music is central to the film. And in some ways, I wanted the movie to feel like a Celine Dion song, with all the highs and the lows.’
LOVE AGAIN OPENS IN CINEMAS ON 12 MAY.
‘I wanted the movie to feel like a Celine Dion song, with all the highs and lows’ JIM STROUSE