Reflections on ... Nico, 1988 (2017)

/ Trine Dryholm as gloomy punk diva Nico in the biopic Nico, 1988 /

My quick reflections on Nico, 1988, the 2017 biopic about the chain-smoking, heroin-ravaged and wraith-cheekboned German punk chanteuse Nico (1938 – 1988) starring Danish actress Trine Dryholm and directed by Susanna Nicchiarelli. As the title suggests, the movie focuses on the final year of the down-on-her-luck former Warhol Superstar's life, when she was touring the dives of Europe doing desultory concerts. (I streamed it on More4 Saturday night. If you’re curious to see it, don’t delay – it’s going to get deleted from the platform soon!).

 / The actual Nico photographed in the late eighties towards the end of her life /

I’ve been a Nico obsessive since I was a teenager, but I approached the film with an open mind. (It received a decidedly mixed reception). Good or bad, for me Nico, 1988 was bound to be fascinating.

What mainly struck a wrong note for me: when Nico angrily snaps at a journalist, “Don’t call me Nico. Call me by my real name – Christa!” The film seemingly implies she resented the persona of “Nico” being imposed on her and yearned to return to her “true self” Christa again. But I’ve never read anything to support this assertion and doubt Nico ever said it. It was her mentor the German fashion photographer Herbert Tobias who first bestowed the mononym “Nico” on her in the fifties when she was a 16-year old model and she kept it for the rest of her life. From what I’ve gathered, she disliked her real name (Christa Päffgen) anyway, feeling it was bourgeois and “too German” and preferred the air of mystery and androgyny that “Nico” provided.

 / Teenage fashion model Nico photographed in 1956 by Herbert Tobias - the photographer who first nicknamed her "Nico" /

The script crams-in lots of awkward exposition (like Nico bringing-up the subject of her childhood, for example, or that her son Ari was fathered by actor Alain Delon) in an unnatural way to fill-in the gaps. Nico, 1988 frequently displays a shaky and selective grasp of the facts. (Which is true of all biopics, to be fair).

/ Trine Dryholm as Nico /

According to the script, Nico spoke in “profound” show business platitudes (“I’ve been on the top. I’ve been on the bottom. Both places are empty”) worthy of Helen Lawson or Neely O’Hara in Valley of the Dolls.

/ Pop Art "girl of the moment" Nico in the sixties when she was the chanteuse for Andy Warhol's house band The Velvet Underground /

The film uncritically buys into the popular cliché that Nico “deliberately” made herself ugly later in life (“Am I ugly? Good! I wasn’t happy when I was beautiful”). Nico was always deeply image-conscious, there’s no shortage of examples of her on the record fretting about gaining weight, and for someone “unconcerned” about her appearance Nico was remarkably devoted to black eyeliner and mascara right to the end.

/ Embodiment of ruined glamour: Nico - wreathed in cigarette smoke - onstage in the eighties /  

Nico’s touring band contains a female Romanian violinist called Sylvia. I could be wrong, but I don’t think Nico’s backing group ever featured a female musician (she was notorious for her antipathy towards other women). There’s a half-hearted fabricated subplot about a doomed romance between Sylvia and another of Nico’s heroin-addicted musicians which seems to get dropped mid-way through. This creates the impression Nicchiarelli was unsure if Nico’s own story sufficiently was interesting.

/ Director Susanna Nicchiarelli and leading lady Trine Dryholm /

When Nico embarks on her final, fatal bicycle journey in Ibiza on that fateful day in July 1988 (en route to buy marijuana, she suffers a heart attack, crashes her bike and dies of a cerebral hemorrhage), she should be seen winding a black scarf around her head first. Filmmaker Paul Morrissey would later rail something like it was “those damn black rags” Nico insisted on wearing that caused her death.

Actually, the sartorial styling is always a bit “off”: Nico’s sunglasses should be butch mirrored aviators.  She should be sporting a keffiyeh scarf. They still depict Nico wearing the long brown boots she was wearing around the time of her Marble Index album in the late sixties. By the eighties, Nico had long since discarded them for black leather motorcycle boots, always left unbuckled. To their credit, the signature punk-y skull-studded black leather wristband Nico wore in the eighties is well represented.

/ The skull wristband! Worn by the actual Nico (above) and Dryholm (below) /

There are some inexplicable musical choices. I can possibly understand why Nico is depicted huskily warbling Nat King Cole’s "Nature Boy” in a hotel lobby backed by jazz musicians in Italy. She recorded the jazz standard “My Funny Valentine” on her final album in 1985. Maybe they couldn’t afford the rights to that song? But why does Dryholm croon the 1984 single “Big in Japan” by Alphaville over the closing credits? It has zero connection with Nico.

/ Trine Dryholm as Nico /

At its weakest, Nico, 1988 sometimes looks and feels like a French and Saunders parody. There could have been more moments of absurd black tragi-comedy. Dryholm never quite nails the cadaverous and macabre Morticia Addams-like aspect of Nico’s demeanor. She should have been even more perverse, morbid and inscrutable! But maybe Nicchiarelli feared that would make her unsympathetic?

 / Zombie Queen: a wraith-like Nico photographed in the Italian magazine Ciao in 1981 / 

What the makers of Nico, 1988 got right:  

Nico’s grubby indifference to hygiene (her former lovers recall she preferred spraying herself with perfume rather than bathing). “Don’t worry, sir,” Nico explains to her new landlord in Manchester when he explains how the boiler works. “I take showers very rarely.”

Sandor Funtek is perfectly cast as Ari (Nico’s profoundly troubled son) and his scenes with Dryholm (when Nico belatedly attempts to compensate for her prolonged absences during his childhood) are moving. They even got the birthmark on his forehead right!

 / Dryholm as Nico and Funtek as Ari ... /

/ ... and the real deal / 

In truth, Dryholm never really resembles Nico (she looks more like Helen Mirren. Or as Variety’s critic puts it, she “looks like a long-black-haired, coldly fierce erotic-zombie version of Roseanne Barr”). Nor does she attempt to emulate Nico’s inimitable Germanic vampire priestess Voice of Doom. But you can’t fault her intensely committed, starkly unglamorous portrayal and her re-interpretations of Nico’s songs are powerful. And Dryholm intermittently captures Nico’s Night of the Living Dead thousand-yard death glare. I especially liked the wired and jittery soundcheck performance of “All Tomorrow’s Parties.”

Ultimately, Nico, 1988 is a sympathetic and well-intentioned low budget labour of love and a noble enterprise for both Nicchiarelli and Dryholm. Let’s face it: it’s impressive Nico, 1988 even got made. If this biopic leads to anyone discovering Nico’s haunting and uncompromised musical vision, that can only be a good thing.  

/ Nico towards the end of her life /




Further reading:

I’ve blogged about the Nico - the Marlene Dietrich of punk / Edith Piaf of the Blank Generation - many times: her contemporary Marianne Faithfull reflects on Nico; the historic encounter When John Waters Met Nico; Nico’s 1960s modelling days; how the old jazz standard “My Funny Valentine” (and heroin) connects Nico with Chet Baker; and When Patti Smith Met Nico; Nico's influence on Leonard Cohen. 

Reflections on … Ari and Mario (1966)

/ The ever-inscrutable Nico (1938 - 1988): Warhol Superstar, Velvet Underground chanteuse, heroin-ravaged diva and “possessor of the most haunting wraith cheekbones of the 20th century” (thank you, James Wolcott of Vanity Fair) /

What's a busy single mother and Warhol Superstar to do? Nico needs to go out so, naturally, calls on Puerto Rican drag queen / underground film starlet Mario Montez to baby-sit her young son Ari Boulogne at her cramped apartment in New York's louche Chelsea Hotel.

/ Ari and Nico: this is very much how they appear in Ari and Mario /

High jinks ensue: cherub-faced Ari is adorable but so hyperactive and wild he is virtually feral. Montez offers to read to him, sing to him and dance for him, but Ari is oblivious to her charms and more interested in alternately pretending to be a crocodile and a cowboy and shooting her with his toy gun (towards the end Montez finally snaps, "Can't you find something else to shoot at?"). Off-screen from behind the camera director Andy Warhol himself is frequently audible encouraging urging Ari to misbehave.

All the "action" takes place within the confined space of the tiny kitchen and there is no editing. The film feels like a home movie (it’s filmed in grainy Super 8 but in grunge-y bleached-out colour instead of black and white), albeit a home movie with an exceptionally hip and stylish bohemian cast.

/ Andy Warhol and Mario Montez during the making of The Chelsea Girls (1966) /

In lieu of narrative the film is primarily an affectionate character study of the unlikely duo of three-year-old boy and transvestite. Warhol's more famous Superstar transvestites Candy Darling, Jackie Curtis and Holly Woodlawn emerged later; the rather swarthy Mario Montez (1935-2013) can be seen as their precursor. Montez (real name: Rene Rivera from Brooklyn, with a day job at the post office) was the then-reigning drag queen of choice for underground filmmakers in the early sixties: she'd already worked with Jack Smith in the notorious Flaming Creatures (1963) and appeared in off-Broadway plays; Montez and Nico would both subsequently feature in Warhol's The Chelsea Girls (1966), also set at the Chelsea Hotel. For her baby-sitting assignment Montez chooses to wear an incongruous ensemble of long powder-blue taffeta evening gown, blonde bouffant wig, dangling earrings and heavily-layered clown-like make-up.

/ Pioneering Warhol drag queen superstar Mario Montez /

Ari (born 1962) was the son Nico claimed was fathered by the European art cinema heartthrob Alain Delon (to this day Delon denies paternity). Certainly, if Ari is the offspring of Nico and Delon he inherited their looks: he is an exceptionally beautiful child.

Montez, befitting an exhibitionistic, attention-seeking Warhol Superstar, is acutely conscious of being filmed and is eager to seize the opportunity to perform but when she offers to entertain Ari by singing for him, Ari shakes his head no. She sings "Ten Little Indians" anyway; Ari stonily ignores her. In keeping with the cowboys and Indians theme, when Montez improvises an interpretative Indian squaw dance, Ari hides his face behind a curtain rather than watch her. It's Montez's exasperated attempts to both try to relate to Ari and to maintain her sweet-voiced, lady-like demeanor that make Ari and Mario one of Warhol's funniest and most likable films.

Early in the film the actress, jazz singer and fellow Chelsea Hotel habitué Tally Brown (another veteran of both Warhol and Jack Smith films) makes a brief but vivid appearance. She drops by to use Nico's phone: hers has been cut off because hasn't paid the bill. A charismatic figure in a fur hat and suede go-go boots, she speaks to Ari in French with genuine warmth, asking if he knows any songs. When Ari answers No, Tally points out, “Your mother is a singer” but Ari doesn't reply.

/ Above: Tally Brown photographed by Billy Name at Max's Kansas City in the sixties /

When Nico returns from her outing she sits on the floor and talks casually in her whisper-soft German accent to Montez while Ari tears around, sometimes playing with the off-screen Warhol. The film captures a radiantly beautiful Nico with almost waist-length pale blonde hair, looking fashion model-elegant in a man's navy-blue pea coat over a turtleneck sweater and pinstriped hipster trousers.

Knowledge of Nico's biography foreshadows Ari and Mario with a tragic extra resonance. She has been routinely vilified in print for her parenting ability, with some justification. Not long after the film Nico would hand Ari over to Alain Delon's parents in France to raise and descend into heroin addiction. More damningly, the general consensus is that later in life when they were reunited Nico initiated the adult Ari into heroin use.

In Ari and Mario, though, we see only relaxed, unaffected affection between Nico and her young son. Pouring him orange juice, Nico teases, "Ari doesn't love me anymore." At one point Ari approaches and spontaneously plants a kiss on the side of Nico's face then goes back to careening around like a Tasmanian devil. The sight of Nico and Ari at this point in their lives when there would seemingly be so much potential and optimism ahead for them, you can't help but feel a wave of sadness for the despair, addiction and premature death that awaits them both in the future. (Nico died in 1988 aged 49).

Devoid of his usual cocktail of sadomasochism and amphetamines, Ari and Mario's emphasis on innocence and domesticity is a sweet exception in the Warhol canon.

I've blogged about "the Marlene Dietrich of Punk" Nico many times over the years: her contemporary Marianne Faithfull reflects on Nico here; the historic encounter When John Waters Met Nico; Nico’s 1960s modelling days; how the old jazz standard “My Funny Valentine” (and heroin) connects Nico with Chet Baker; When Patti Smith Met Nico and finally, the relationship between Leonard Cohen and Nico.

Reflections on ... Nico in Philippe Garrel's Le bleu des origines (1979)

/ Nico in the film Le bleu des origines (1979) by Philippe Garrel / 

“I film women with a soul.” Interview with Philippe Garrel

[I recently had the high honour of being referenced as a source on Dennis Cooper’s blog. OK he didn't mention me by name, but Cooper recently devoted a blog entry to uncompromising French filmmaker Philippe Garrel and the paragraph on Garrel’s ultra-obscure / rarely-seen 1979 film Le bleu des origines was lifted from my IMDb review. I saw the film at The British Film Institute in 2007. It prompted me to post it here in its entirety and make it look prettier than it does on IMDb.]

Le bleu des origines is an uncompromising example of old school avant-garde cinema at its most cryptic, enigmatic and inscrutable. Made by Philippe Garrel in 1979 using a hand-cranked silent camera, bleu represents absolute year zero in film-making, a return to the starkest basics of film's origins in early silent cinema, replacing any trace of narrative or even dialogue with an emphasis almost exclusively on close-ups of women's faces. The film is black and white and absolutely silent for its near 50-minute duration. 

The total silence feels oppressive: silent cinema, after all, was accompanied by music. The silence, though, serves to ensure the focus on the actresses' faces is absolute, with no distraction.

The faces in question belong to the former Velvet Underground German chanteuse, Warhol Superstar and cult figure Nico, and bohemian French starlet Zouzou. By 1979 Nico had been Garrel's lover, muse and collaborator for a decade. Le bleu des origines was the seventh and last film they made together and marked the end of their off-screen relationship as well.

The film's tone is intimate but mysterious and ultimately despairing. It is essentially a portrait of two women, Nico and Zouzou, who are offered up for endless existential contemplation. There is no hint of even the most basic narrative but it is human nature to try to construct one, to try to thread together scenes, which are alternately jagged and brief, and sometimes-long Warholian takes that frankly court boredom. 

Garrel offers hints of symbolism that are probably highly significant but remain opaque: Nico examining a jewel in her hand; many shots of both women reading manuscripts or poetry by candlelight; a glimpse of Nico's passport; Nico pointing at the sky; Zouzou writing; Nico folding a letter and putting it in an envelope; Zouzou wielding a knife; Nico as an angel of death with waist-length hair in a billowing black cape, filmed in high winter on the roof of the Paris Opera House among the stone gargoyles. Most strikingly, Nico in some kind of dungeon or prison slowly climbing a stone staircase, pausing on each step, in jerky zombie-like movements straight out of a lost German Expressionist masterpiece. 




/ Consider this a trailer for Le bleu des origines: eerie dirge "We've Got the Gold" from Nico's 1974 album The End providing a soundtrack to clips from Le bleu des origines /

Nico and Zouzou are mostly filmed alone but sometimes together. What links them? Both women were frequent collaborators with Garrel and had appeared in his films several times separately before. Nico was romantically linked with Garrel: I’m uncertain whether Zouzou was. Like Anita Pallenberg, both women had been involved with the doomed Rolling Stone Brian Jones. In the 1960s both Nico and Zouzou had been glamorous art-y girls of the moment, fashion models turned singers and actresses. By 1979 both women had hit hard times. Nico, Zouzou and Garrel are all known for their heroin addiction. (Later in her life Zouzou did jail time and was reduced to selling the Parisian equivalent of The Big Issue outside Paris metro stations).

Again and again Garrel films them in scenes that emphasise their alienation, anguish, distress, isolation, solitude. Both Nico and Zouzou were great beauties and there is genuine pleasure in lengthily scrutinising them in long silent takes; from shot to shot, though, depending on how the light hits their faces, both can look suddenly, startlingly ravaged, older than their years. Maybe the film is about the hell of heroin addiction? 

There is actually a third woman in the film who appears so briefly she is almost subliminal: Jean Seberg. (Seberg and Nico had already appeared together in the earlier Garrel film Les hautes solitudes in 1974). In some shots a barely glimpsed heavy-set but still beautiful older woman appears, standing behind Nico while Nico plays the piano like the phantom of the opera. Later, and shockingly, Seberg inexplicably slaps Nico hard across the face. Seberg committed suicide in 1979, the year this film was released. This surely represents her last-ever film appearance.

While Zouzou gets equal screen time and is certainly charismatic, it must be said the film belongs to Nico. In her haunting close-ups she suggests the post-punk Greta Garbo or Marlene Dietrich of underground art cinema. Even in the “talkies” of the 1930s some of Garbo and Dietrich's most mesmerising on-screen moments were silent close-ups of their faces (i.e. the concluding scenes of Queen Christina and Morocco). Their allure was non-verbal, not dependent on dialogue or voices – they cast a spell with just their eyes. In Le bleu des origines Nico does the same. 

/ The famous concluding close-up of Queen Christina (1933) in which the serenely impenetrable Greta Garbo stares into the horizon, her inner world sealed off to us. I’d argue this anticipates the lengthy, unfathomable close-ups Andy Warhol and then Garrel would devote to Nico in their underground art films  /

As the film continues, the mood of distress and impending tragedy grows more overt. Towards the end Nico is shown wrapped in a headscarf, crying genuine inconsolable tears, her breath visible in frosty night air, seemingly not acting. Her depression is tangible. For someone frequently lazily described as an ice queen who sang in a bored monotone, Nico here convincingly projects raw emotion: her presence aches with a heavy sadness. 

Sometimes hypnotic, sometimes catatonic, Le bleu des origines is as bleakly beautiful as Nico's best music and was obviously a heartfelt personal and artistic statement. If the film does represent the end of their relationship, it is certainly a last cinematic love letter from Garrel to Nico.

/ Portrait of Nico circa her 1981 album Drama of Exile /



/ You can watch Le bleu des origines in its entirety on the Youtube link above. How lucky I was to see it in an exquisite sparkling print at The British Film Institute: this is clearly a bootleg (I think someone filmed it sitting in a cinema!) but Garrel has never released it on DVD and for now this represents your best viewing source. For a soundtrack to this silent film I suggest you load your CD player with Nico's essential trilogy (her "gravest hits" if you like) - The Marble Index (1969), Desertshore (1970) and The End (1974) - and crank it up loud /

Further reading:

Read the Dennis Cooper blog for an excellent overview of Garrel's career

Fascinating 2002 interview with the then-58 year old Zouzou in The Guardian. What a life.

I've blogged about the ever-inscrutable Nico (“possessor of the most haunting wraith cheekbones of the 20th century” - thank you, James Wolcott of Vanity Fair) many times: her contemporary Marianne Faithfull reflects on Nico here; the historic encounter When John Waters Met Nico; Nico’s 1960s modelling days; how the old jazz standard "My Funny Valentine" (and heroin) connects Nico with Chet Baker; and  finally, When Patti Smith Met Nico.

Remembering Nico (16 October 1938 - 18 July 1988)

Warhol superstar Nico (16 October 1938 - 18 July 1988) - the ultimate wraith-cheekboned, crypt-voiced, chain-smoking, heroin-ravaged chanteuse and the Marlene Dietrich of punk - died on this day in 1988.

A nice way to remember her: These two moody and dramatic portraits of androgynous crop-haired 18-year old beatnik Nico in her fashion modeling days in Paris in 1956.

Below: a much later shot of the angel-of-death diva in the 1980s. (The cigarette was ever-present, spanning decades).

Note the skull-studded black leather wristband she's wearing here - one of her punk-y sartorial trademarks in the 1980s. I wonder who has it now, or if she was cremated wearing it? And did anyone ever smoke a cigarette with such bleak conviction? I've blogged about Nico many times: her contemporary Marianne Faithfull reflects on Nico here; the historic encounter When John Waters Met Nico; Nico’s 1960s modelling days; how the old jazz standard "My Funny Valentine" (and heroin) connects Nico with Chet Baker; and finally, When Patti Smith Met Nico.