Nico, 1988 (2017)

Directed by: Susanna Nicchiarelli | 93 minutes | biography, drama | Actors: Trine Dyrholm, John Gordon Sinclair, Anamaria Marinca, Sandor Funtek, Thomas Trabacchi, Karina Fernandez, Calvin Demba, Francesco Colella, Matt Patresi

Nico’s solo albums (from the Velvet Underground and that banana cover) are not everyone’s cup of tea. Nico’s music is so soul-cuttingly gloomy, that if you played her at a funeral you would drag your next of kin to the grave, and not necessarily out of love. And that while this woman, who died in 1988, who is actually called Christa Päffgen, was one of the most sought-after models in the world in the 1960s. A woman Alain Delon and Jim Morrison were fishing for, and not just that. Nico played along for a while, but fame didn’t matter to her in the end.

That fatal combination is perhaps more appealing than anything else. This does not only apply to fans, but also to young directors with a woman’s heart, such as the Italian Susanna Nicchiarelli. She steadfastly chose the last two years of Nico’s life, during which he toured Cold War Europe in a beat-up van, invariably accompanied by a syringe of heroin and a tape recorder with which she recorded sounds that reminded her of the bombing of the Berlin where she grew up.

The latter is a recurring theme in ‘Nico, 1988’: whenever an emotional moment takes place, it is accompanied by bomb roars as in a Götterdämmerung. What a journey it must have been for Danish character actress Trine Dyrholm (“Kollektivet”) to transform into this expired diva. Dyrholm does so with such audacity that she takes Nico to her will, while preserving the spirit. She is in line with the director, who tested strong stories against relatives such as son Ari. When in doubt, she leaves things open, such as the cause of death.

Dyrholm sings himself and the film is permeated with that typical eighties atmosphere, wandering through a Europe full of alternative energy. A bit of a shame is that the supporting roles are not interestingly developed. But that hardly matters because of the all-consuming obnoxious, tragicomic survivor in the character Nico. When her decent manager Richard (John Gordon Sinclair) makes an unexpected declaration of love, the singer answers that she is already going to marry her landlord because she is in danger of being evicted. This is followed by a roaring burst of laughter.