''Nico, 1988'' is a 2017

biographical A biography, or simply bio, is a detailed description of a person's life. It involves more than just basic facts like education, work, relationships, and death; it portrays a person's experience of these life events. Unlike a profile or curric ...

drama Drama is the specific Mode (literature), mode of fiction Mimesis, represented in performance: a Play (theatre), play, opera, mime, ballet, etc., performed in a theatre, or on Radio drama, radio or television.Elam (1980, 98). Considered as a g ...

film written and directed by

Susanna Nicchiarelli Susanna Nicchiarelli (; born 6 May 1975) is an Italian film director, director, actress and screenwriter. Biography Nicchiarelli graduated in Philosophy at the University of Rome La Sapienza, Sapienza University in Rome and gained a PhD in Philos ...

. A co-production between Italy and Belgium, the film chronicles the last year of the life of German singer and model

Nico Christa Päffgen (; 16 October 1938 – 18 July 1988), known by her stage name Nico, was a German singer, songwriter, actress, and model. Nico had roles in several films, including Federico Fellini's '' La Dolce Vita'' (1960) and Andy Warhol's ...

. It had its world premiere at the

74th Venice International Film Festival The 74th annual Venice International Film Festival was held from 30 August to 9 September 2017, at Venice Lido in Italy. American actress Annette Bening was the jury president for the main competition. Italian actor Alessandro Borghi hosted ...

on 30 August 2017, and was released theatrically in Italy on 12 October 2017 by I Wonder Pictures.

Plot

During

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

, a young Christa Päffgen watches

Berlin Berlin ( ; ) is the Capital of Germany, capital and largest city of Germany, by both area and List of cities in Germany by population, population. With 3.7 million inhabitants, it has the List of cities in the European Union by population withi ...

being bombed from a distance. In 1988, Päffgen—now known as

—is living in

Manchester Manchester () is a city and the metropolitan borough of Greater Manchester, England. It had an estimated population of in . Greater Manchester is the third-most populous metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, with a population of 2.92&nbs ...

. Having risen to fame as a model and a singer for

the Velvet Underground The Velvet Underground were an American Rock music, rock band formed in New York City in 1964. Its classic lineup consisted of singer and guitarist Lou Reed, Welsh multi-instrumentalist John Cale, guitarist Sterling Morrison, and percussionis ...

, 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 Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

, 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 A guerrilla gig is a type of concert performed in a non-traditional setting or arranged in an unusual fashion. It became associated with punk rock, and noise rock bands in UK and the United States during the early to mid-2000s. Bands who perform a ...

in communist

Czechoslovakia Czechoslovakia ( ; Czech language, Czech and , ''Česko-Slovensko'') was a landlocked country in Central Europe, created in 1918, when it declared its independence from Austria-Hungary. In 1938, after the Munich Agreement, the Sudetenland beca ...

at the behest of local dissident artists. Before the performance, Nico becomes angry when she cannot procure 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 West Germany was the common English name for the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) from its formation on 23 May 1949 until German reunification, its reunification with East Germany on 3 October 1990. It is sometimes known as the Bonn Republi ...

where they plan for Nico's final tour performance in

West Berlin West Berlin ( or , ) was a political enclave which comprised the western part of Berlin from 1948 until 1990, during the Cold War. Although West Berlin lacked any sovereignty and was under military occupation until German reunification in 1 ...

. 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 Ibiza (; ; ; #Names and pronunciation, see below) or Iviza is a Spanish island in the Mediterranean Sea off the eastern coast of the Iberian Peninsula. It is 150 kilometres (93 miles) from the city of Valencia. It is the third largest of th ...

for her holiday, but as revealed in the credits, she died on the island on 18 July 1988 at the age of 49 following a cycling accident.

Cast

* Trine Dyrholm as

John Gordon Sinclair John Gordon Sinclair (born Gordon John Sinclair; 4 February 1962) is a Scottish actor. He is best known for playing Gregory in the 1981 film '' Gregory's Girl''. There was a Gordon Sinclair already registered with Equity, so he took John Gordon ...

as Richard * Anamaria Marinca as Sylvia * Sandor Funtek as Ari * as

Domenico Domenico is an Italian given name for males and may refer to: People * Domenico Alfani, Italian painter * Domenico Allegri, Italian composer * Domenico Alvaro, Italian mobster * Domenico Ambrogi, Italian painter * Domenico Auria, Italian a ...

* Karina Fernandez as Laura * Calvin Demba as Alex * as Francesco

Production

The film 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". Dyrholm sang all the songs in the film; she restructured the music with a musician and a band. They worked into a music studio before shooting. 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.IFFR Live: Nico, 1988 interactive Q&A with Susanna Nicchiarelli and Trine Dyrholm
YouTube. 7 February 2018. Retrieved 8 August 2018. 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 VHS (Video Home System) is a discontinued standard for consumer-level analog video recording on tape cassettes, introduced in 1976 by JVC. It was the dominant home video format throughout the tape media period of the 1980s and 1990s. Ma ...

. 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". Nicchiarelli used images of the real Nico's face and early video footage of

Jonas Mekas Jonas Mekas (; ; December 24, 1922 – January 23, 2019) was a Lithuanian-American filmmaker, poet, and artist who has been called "the godfather of American avant-garde cinema". Mekas's work has been exhibited in museums and at festivals world ...

. She wrote to him and he answered her immediately. Nicchiarelli said, "It is fun to work with archive material in fiction movies".

Release

''Nico, 1988'' had its world premiere in the Horizons section of the

on 30 August 2017. The film was released theatrically in Italy on 12 October 2017 by I Wonder Pictures. In the United States, it was released on 1 August 2018 by Magnolia Pictures.

Reception

On the

review aggregator A review aggregator is a system that collects reviews and ratings of products and services, such as films, books, video games, music, software, hardware, or cars. This system then stores the reviews to be used for supporting a website where user ...

website

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review aggregator, review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee ...

, the film holds an approval rating of 93% based on 76 reviews, with an average rating of 7/10. The website's critics consensus reads, "''Nico, 1988'' takes an absorbing – and appropriately idiosyncratic – look at the singer's later years."

Metacritic Metacritic is an American website that aggregates reviews of films, television shows, music albums, video games, and formerly books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created ...

, which uses a

weighted average The weighted arithmetic mean is similar to an ordinary arithmetic mean (the most common type of average), except that instead of each of the data points contributing equally to the final average, some data points contribute more than others. The ...

, assigned the film a score of 75 out of 100, based on 21 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Dyrholm, who played Nico, received critical acclaim for her performance.

Owen Gleiberman Owen Gleiberman (born February 24, 1959) is an American film critic who has been chief film critic for '' Variety'' magazine since May 2016, a title he shares with . Previously, Gleiberman wrote for ''Entertainment Weekly'' from 1990 until 2014. ...

of '' 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."

Kenneth Turan Kenneth Turan (; born October 27, 1946) is an American retired film critic, author, and lecturer in the Master of Professional Writing Program at the University of Southern California. He was a film critic for the ''Los Angeles Times'' from 1991 ...

of the ''

Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' is an American Newspaper#Daily, daily newspaper that began publishing in Los Angeles, California, in 1881. Based in the Greater Los Angeles city of El Segundo, California, El Segundo since 2018, it is the List of new ...

'' also praised Dyrholm as "an actress of formidable presence", giving a "strong, truthful, unflinching performance that powers the film the way Christa's energy powered the bands she was in those late days". Jeannette Catsoulis of ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

'' 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.

Joe Morgenstern Joe Morgenstern (born October 3, 1932) is an American writer and retired film critic. He wrote for ''Newsweek'' from 1965 to 1983, and then for ''The Wall Street Journal'' from 1995 to 2022. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism in 2005. Morge ...

of ''

The Wall Street Journal ''The Wall Street Journal'' (''WSJ''), also referred to simply as the ''Journal,'' is an American newspaper based in New York City. The newspaper provides extensive coverage of news, especially business and finance. It operates on a subscriptio ...

'' wrote, "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." At the Venice Film Festival in 2017, it won the Orrizonti Award for Best Film. At the Donatellos in 2018, it won the Best Original Script award, and was nominated in the Best Films category. At the 9th Magritte Awards, it received a nomination in the category of Best Foreign Film in Coproduction.

References

External links

* * * * {{Susanna Nicchiarelli 2017 films 2017 biographical drama films 2017 independent films 2010s drama road movies 2010s English-language films 2010s historical drama films 2010s Italian films Belgian historical drama films Belgian biographical drama films Belgian independent films Biographical films about actors Biographical films about singers Cultural depictions of actors Cultural depictions of German people Cultural depictions of rock musicians English-language Belgian films English-language Italian films Films directed by Susanna Nicchiarelli Films set in the 1980s Films shot in Bavaria Italian biographical drama films Italian historical drama films Italian independent films Films set in 1988 2010s Belgian films English-language historical drama films English-language biographical drama films Vivo Film films