Nico, 1988

No music and scenes from Lou Reed and Velvet Underground years, the movie is entirely dedicated to the last years of Nico's life, and in particular to her last and sad tour in Europe. Susanna Nicchiarelli portrays the former model and Andy Warhol's muse in her painful and problematic adult phase, which sees her tired and dissatisfied, desperate to break free from her drug and success past, when she was beautiful but not happy. A crude and bleak portrait, which Dyrholm renders fully convincing.

A haunting emotional bio pic that showcases the woman behind the haunting voice that has resonated with so many disaffected youths since the 1960's. The Velvet Underground and Nico has been my favorite album since early adolescence, so I was excited to dive into this one.

This film portrays the last two years in the life of Nico, the broken drug addled chanteuse, who at this point is basically treading water after a life scarred with sadness, regret and disappointment.

The film documents Nico's final tour across Europe with a new band.

I'm a big fan of Nico's music, and thought this was extremely well done, and I'm extremely critical of bio pics. It's a dark, somber and melancholy film that is at times extremely haunting and hypnotic. Trine Dyrholm is fantastic in the role of Nico; her nihilistic and often razor tongued balancing act across an intense emotional terrain inject a tangibility into the film. Bravo!

"Nico Icon" (1995) ,a documentary, was a movie which could not thoroughly satisfy Nico's fans cause the essential,that is to say,the musical side ,was minimal .Both her short stint with the Velvet Underground and her solo career were botched.This work was centered ,in fact,on the son the artist would have had with French star Alain Delon ,a fact which remains uncertain even today and even though the actor's family did take on the child .

There's a very brief hint at a"French actor" in the 2017 movie. "Nico ,1988" is a different matter ,because it deals with the last months of the artist : a poor epitaph ,a sad and tatty end of a singer who was once associated with one of rock's most influential albums ("the V.U. and Nico°,though gossips keep on repeating her creative role was minor,which is not entirely false)

Based on true accounts from people who were around , "Nico 1988" is a gloomy but credible crepuscular biopic ;it seems that, in the eighties, Nico made an attempt at a more palatable (I would not write"commercial" ) ,more "rock " music ;in the seventies ,she would perform with her harmonium -she notably performed in a cathedral , an ideal background for this ghostly ,spectral music ; the treatment of "all tomorrow's parties ",a song she recorded with the V.U. ,makes her music more accessible and more exciting than the haunting but a bit droning sound (her approach of the German National Anthem was impressive though and John Cale 's production of her cover of the Doors' 'the end' helped );and on her tunes,notably "janitor of lunacy" ,the updating is effective and welcome ;this one effortlessly supersedes the studio version.

She would retain a certain cult in Europa and it shows ,,and her before mentioned son ,Ari , appears and is proud of her mother (the 1995 doc showed a young man who would despise his adoptive mother ,which was off-putting); her choice to perform behind the Iron Curtain was as adequate as the cathedral of the seventies .

Tryne Dyrholm 's performance is perfect;she convincingly portrays a jaded faded singer, ravaged by drugs ; her death is given a very proper treatment.

Andy Warhol said that everyone has their fifteen minutes of fame. And he gave Nico, a beautiful young model, her fifteen minutes by pairing her with the Velvet Underground, a rock band in his orbit who were starting their careers. If I recall correctly, the Velvets were unconvinced by their guest singer, but the one album they made together became a cult success. But what do you do when your moment of fame passes? Nico died in relative obscurity before the age of 50, grappling with heroin addiction. As a concept, 'Nico, 1988' might be imagined to be simply unbearably sad. But in fact, there's a lot to enjoy in Susanna Nicchiarelli's film. Her Nico is an addict, sure, with all that that entails, but also a not unaccomplished jazz-rock singer, and a real person trying to extract meaning from her life. It's not easy for her, but neither is this a story of a life not worth living; and her death a sudden and mostly unexpected tragedy the same as anyone else's. Trine Dyrholm is very good in the lead role bringing the character to three-dimensional life. It's an unsentimental movie, but in no senses a cold one.

Bookended by a radio interview in which German gothmother Nico likens eighties Manchester to postwar Berlin; dwelling upon her final years as a self-confessed "fat old junkie" with only fleeting flashbacks to her days as Andy Warhol's muse (her participation in 'La Dolce Vita' isn't even mentioned), the portrait that emerges is more like that of a punk rocker than of a hippy.

With a cigarette permenantly hanging from her lips Trine Dyrholm's throaty rendition of her songs give them a resonance similar to the latter day Marianne Faithfull. (To my untutored ear the way she croaks her way through 'Nature Boy' supplies a poignancy similar to Claire Trevor singing 'Moanin' Low' in 'Key Largo'.)