Love, Again (2023)

This is an old school romance story that is elevated by the presence of Celine Dion--both her person and her songs. The story is that both sides of this romance have had love and lost. Mira lost the lost of her life in a horrific pedestrian vs. car accident that happened in her presence and she has not been able to move on. Her family is urging her to at least try to date, and so she dips a toe into the dating app morass but oddly, also starts texting her dead love's old phone number. Thing is, unbeknownst to her, it has been reassigned to someone else. That someone is Rob. Rob’s a (severely underworked) music critic, heartbroken in his own way, who’s still getting over being dumped by his fiancée on the eve of their wedding. Instead of being annoyed by the messages, he’s touched by their sincerity, to the extent that he may even be falling for whoever’s sending them. He then goes about trying to figure out who she is based on clues in her texts, and meets success when he attends every performance of an opera in hopes of a chance encounter. All of which would have a creepy stalker quality except for Celine Dion's presence in the story. Eighteen years after “Titanic” made her a mega-star, Dion lost her husband and manager, René Angélil, and the singer has made no secret of her struggle to move on since. She helps bridge the gap between the two, and with a few bumps along the road, the inevitable happens. If you like this sort of unrealistic genre of romantic comedy--and in small doses, I most certainly do--this is a fine option, streaming on Netflix.