[yasr_overall_rating]
The last year of singer Nico’s life, as she tours and grapples with addiction and personal demons.
Nico, born Christa Päffgen, is most commonly associated with her vocal work for the Velvet Underground. One of the most fascinating parts of writer/director Susanna Nicchiarelli’s biopic “Nico, 1988”, is Nico’s desperate desire to NOT be associated with the Velvet Underground and to have the focus on her solo work instead. “Nico, 1988” takes a similar stance, valiantly avoiding delving into too much background and following Nico through her last three years as a heroin-addicted, suicidal solo artist. As a result, the film, like its tormented protagonist, seems to be searching for its soul.
One one hand, “Nico, 1988” provides a suitably dingy portrait of an aging legend taking a resolute stance against conformity. Joint – or needle – in hand, Nico (Trine Dyrholm) is lost in memory, too angry and miserable to give a shit about what audiences want. Disjointed scenes of Nico on a very gloomy tour in 1987 are followed by a succession of annual resolutions that don’t entirely do justice to the preceding events.
Narrative aside, lots of things seem to be left out, in fear of cluttering the narrative. As an example, Nicchiarelli sidesteps exploring Nico’s alleged racism. The singer briefly points out her Jewish manager’s (John Gordon Sinclair) heritage at one point, but then proceeds to wax poetically about how her father saved hundreds during the war. Her drug addiction is also glossed over. A few hallucinatory archival images, sweaty withdrawals and shots of syringes inserted into bruised ankles serve as substitutes for meaningful explorations of what it must have truly felt like, to be a lost punk star, weighed down by a heavy luggage of half-faded memories. When it comes to Nico’s death – a heart attack while riding a bicycle in Ibiza – she is shown riding said bike through obscure-looking gates, and then the screen fades and a title card informs us that she died in Ibiza, without specifying the cause.
Does Nicchiarelli deem those “bits” irrelevant? Without knowing much about the singer, I found the director’s “skimming around the edges” frustrating. She doesn’t exactly glorify her heroine, but the scalpel doesn’t dig deep enough either. A significant amount of time is dedicated to exploring Nico’s complicated love for her estranged, suicidal son Ari (Sandor Funtek) – without so much as mentioning that the father was one of the most popular French actors/sex symbols, Alain Delon, who denies it to this day. But even the fact that she abandoned Ari when he was just a baby is somewhat redeemed by her sudden care and unadulterated affection for the kid. Another significant chunk of the film deals with her manager Richard’s unrequited love for Nico. It’s affecting at first but quickly grows tiresome.
So it’s up to Trine Dyrholm to convey all the complexity – urgency, guilt, despair, frenzied nostalgia, etc. – of the titular character. “I’ve been to the top and I’ve been to the bottom,” her Nico intones flatly. “It’s all the same.” She claims that she stopped caring about music, about people and life, but her sorrowful eyes, and – when she’s on stage – the power of her deep, broken voice, give her away. Watching her belt out “My Heart is Empty” or “All Tomorrow’s Parties” is guaranteed to induce goosebumps. It’s quite the performance, both subtle – Dyrholm not afraid to reveal the abhorrent sides of Nico’s personality with a mere gesture or throwaway phrase – and epic, the actress commanding our attention, and admiration, like a genuine rock star.
There’s not much technically wrong with “Nico, 1988.” It’s clearly passionate about its subject, earnest in its intentions; it’s well-shot in a very 1980s full-frame by Crystel Fournier, sparsely but poetically written and for the most part brilliantly acted. It will certainly make you want to YouTube some Nico songs, maybe even buy a biography – at the very least, skim through Wikipedia. Sadly, the film’s just too lost, dishing out a sort of “punk reverie” in spades, but failing to provide a proper sense of scope and grandeur, while also managing to be tedious at a mere 90 minutes. Considering its protagonist’s tumultuous rollercoaster of a life, it should’ve been anything but.
Opens in New York August 1st and in Los Angeles August 3rd
