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Nico, 1988

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Nico, 1988
Directed bySusanna Nicchiarelli
Screenplay bySusanna Nicchiarelli
StarringTrine Dyrholm
John Gordon Sinclair
CinematographyCrystel Fournier
Edited byStefano Cravero
Production
company
Distributed byMagnolia Pictures
Release dates
  • 30 August 2017 (2017-08-30) (Venice Film Festival)
  • 12 October 2017 (2017-10-12) (Italy)
  • 1 April 2018 (2018-April-01) (France)
  • 20 July 2018 (2018-07-20) (Germany)
  • 2 August 2018 (2018-08-02) (United States)
Running time
93 minutes
CountriesItaly
Belgium
LanguageEnglish [1]

Nico, 1988 is a 2017 biographical film based on pop singer Nico directed by Susanna Nicchiarelli. A co-production between Italy and Belgium, it was shot in English language.[1] The film had its world premiere at the Venice Festival on 31 August 2017. The film follows Nico during the last year of her life.[2]

Plot

During World War Two, a young Christa Päffgen watches Berlin being bombed from a distance. In 1988, Päffgen, now known as Nico is living in Manchester. Having risen to fame as a model and a singer for The Velvet Underground, she is tired of talking about her past and prefers to revel in her current image as a bohemian artist. She plans to embark on tour of Europe with her new manager Richard. He assembles a band for her and they set off on the road. Nico's addiction to heroin soon proves to be a problem: she is rude to Richard, delivers abrasive performances and angrily berates her band during a concert in Italy before storming off stage. However, she forms a close friendship with Dome La Muerte who tries to focus her attention on performing. Nico confides to him that she enjoys living a life of excess having experienced hunger and poverty in the aftermath of the war.

Before a concert in Paris, Nico mentions her son Ari during an interview and explains she was too wild to have a child at the time of his birth. She goes to visit him in an institution in France where he has been placed due to a suicide attempt and drug addiction. Richard agrees to a have Nico perform a guerrilla gig in communist Czechoslovakia at the behest of local dissident artists. Before the performance, Nico becomes angry when she cannot precure heroin and accuses the hosts of stealing her passport. Richard sternly reminds her that there are people around the world who still love her music and that the Czechoslovakian audience are taking a risk to see her perform. During the gig, Nico delivers a passionate performance to the delight of the crowd but the gig is brought to an abrupt halt as police raid the venue.

Nico and her band manage to escape to West Germany where they plan for Nico's final tour performance in Berlin. Richard praises her performance and agrees to help her get clean and retrieve Ari from the institution. Things start going well for Nico and her band as she gives up drugs, but Ari attempts suicide and is placed in hospital. Nico states to Dome that she plans to retire from performing so she can grow old elegantly. Ari is released from hospital and Richard encourages him and Nico to take a long holiday to recuperate. He negotiates a new contract with Nico before she departs ensuring that she and Ari receive their share of royalties from her days with The Velvet Underground and they promise to record a new album together upon her return.

Nico travels to Ibiza for her holiday, but as revealed in the credits, she died following a cycling accident on the island on the 18th of July, 1988.

Cast

Production

The movie was a collaboration between the director and main actress Trine Dyrholm; they co-created the character. Dyrholm stated: "We created this version of Nico together".[3] Dyrholm sang all the songs in the movie; she restructured the music with a musician and a band. They worked into a music studio before shooting.[4] Nicchiarelli did a lot of research and she flew to Manchester to meet Nico's manager. She also interviewed Nico's son, Ari. He read the first draft and later the final script.[5]

The film was shot in the square format instead of rectangular format. Nicchiarelli explained: "One of the main choices was the atmosphere of the second half of the 1980s which is very interesting; it has the decadence and the quality of the VHS. They worked on the quality of the VHS and tried to reproduce that, that kind of feeling. VHS and television are square format and it forces you to stay on the characters. I think it is interesting when cinema goes back to the square. Lately, some of the best films I've seen are square".[5]

Nicchiarelli used images of the real Nico's face and early video footage of Jonas Mekas. She wrote to him and he answered her immediately. Nicchiarelli said: "It is fun to work with archive material in fiction movies".[5]

Release

The movie went to general release in the US in early August 2018. On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 94% based on 62 reviews, with an average rating of 7.2/10. The website's critical consensus reads; "Nico, 1988 takes an absorbing – and appropriately idiosyncratic – look at the singer's later years."[6] On Metacritic, the film has an average weighted score of 75 out of 100, based on 21 critics, indicating "favorable reviews".[7]

Dyrholm, who played Nico, received critical acclaim for her performance. Variety hailed her as "a powerhouse of authenticity. Her moroseness is mesmerizing, but she also gives Nico a tense intelligence, and her singing is uncanny."[2] The Los Angeles Times also raved about Dyrholm as "an actress of formidable presence", giving "strong, truthful, unflinching performance that powers the film the way Christa's energy powered the bands she was in those late days".[8] The New York Times also praised how Dyrholm was photographed in "brutally unforgiving close-up", saying that it "fully captures the faded charisma of the singer" in the last year of her existence.[9] Joe Morgenstern in Wall Street Journal emphased, saying: "I’ve never seen a performance quite like it — unsparingly harsh, but also graceful, droll and tender, a portrait of soul-weariness laced with a yearning for salvation."[10]

At the Venice Film Festival in 2017, it won the Orrizonti Award for Best Film.[11] At the Donatellos in 2018, (which work in Italy on the same criteria as the Oscars), it won the Best Original Script award,[12] and was nominated in the Best Films category.[13] At the 9th Magritte Awards, it received a nomination in the category of Best Foreign Film in Coproduction.[14]

References

  1. ^ a b "Nico, 1988. Official trailer". Youtube. Retrieved 8 August 2018.
  2. ^ a b Gleiberman, Owen (2017-08-30). "Film Review: 'Nico, 1988'". Variety. Retrieved 2018-08-10.
  3. ^ "Nico, 1988 | Special" [Interview with the director and main actress about their collaboration]. YouTube. 17 April 2018. Retrieved 8 August 2018.
  4. ^ "Nico, 1988 | Special" [interview about the recording of the music before shooting. YouTube. 17 April 2018. Retrieved 8 August 2018.
  5. ^ a b c IFFR Live: Nico, 1988 interactive Q&A with Susanna Nicchiarelli and Trine Dyrholm. YouTube. 7 February 2018. Retrieved 8 August 2018.
  6. ^ "Nico, 1988 (2018)". Rotten Tomatoes. Fandango Media. Retrieved August 8, 2018.
  7. ^ "Nico, 1988 - Critic reviews". Metacritic. Retrieved 8 August 2018.
  8. ^ Turan, Kenneth (3 August 2018). "Nico, 1988 review". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 8 August 2018.
  9. ^ Jeannette Catsoulis. "Nico, 1988 review". NY Times. 31 July 2018. Retrieved 8 August 2018.
  10. ^ Joe Morgenstern. "Nico. 1988 review". wsj.com. 2 August 2018. Retrieved 8 August 2018.
  11. ^ Awards of the 74th Venice Film Festival. labiennale.org. Retrieved 8 August 2018.
  12. ^ "David Di Donatello Awards 2018 Result [Vincitori Premi David Di Donatello 2018]". daviddidonatello.it. Archived from the original on 13 August 2018. Retrieved 10 August 2018.
  13. ^ "Academy of the Italian Cinema - candidates for the David Di Donatello Awards 2018". daviddidonatello.it. Archived from the original on 13 August 2018. Retrieved 10 August 2018.
  14. ^ Roxborough, Scott (14 January 2019). "'Girl,' 'Above the Law' Lead Belgium Film Award Nominations". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved 14 January 2019.
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