NICO ICON
A film review by Lax Madapati
Copyright 1996 Lax Madapati
Germany, 1995 Running Time: 1:12
Cast: None credited Director: Susanne Ofteringer Screenplay: Susanne Ofteringer Cinematography: Judith Kaufmann, Katarzyna Remin Music: Jens Tukiendorf, Charles Blackwell
Nico Icon, through a series of interviews and original footage, attempts to portray the story of a multi-faceted woman Nico who was a member of the '60s rock band 'The Velvet Underground'. A refugee from Germany born Christa Paffgen during World War II, Nico was also a fashion model, a reclusive beauty, a feckless mother and a reckless junkie. Or so, the director Susanne Ofteringer wants us to believe, at the end of it all.
The film, or rather documentary, starts off with Nico singing the Velvet Underground's 'Femme Fatale' in a very lugubrious tone and alternates between clips of original footage and interviews with several people associated with Nico at various stages of her life. What is surprising is the number of famous people Nico has associated herself with, right from her modeling days upto her ultimate obscure demise, veering on a path of self-destruction, self- inflicted and substance abuse.
In between clips of original footage, we get to hear different view points of the many people Nico's path in life crossed with. Most of them seem to agree that the beauty that she is, Nico resented her own good looks and would much rather be depressed and gloomy and be known as a musician rather than just a beautiful woman. Jackson Browne, the rock musician and one of Nico's many lovers (who also contributed to her first solo album 'Chelsea Girl') explains about her initiation into The Velvet Underground. Paul Morrisey, director of most of Andy Warhol movies and who was responsible for putting Nico with The Velvet Underground as a second singer and organ player via Andy Warhol, amid strong initial resistance from band members Lou Reed and company, tells how Nico deliberately spoilt her looks by dying her hair with strange colors and taking drugs. Danny Fields, music journalist, explains her association with rock legend Jim Morrison and how she enjoyed Morrison's alleged attempt to kill her once during a sex ritual.
Most touching of all accounts on Nico is the one narrated by Edith Boulonge, mother of one of Nico's many lovers Alian Delon, by who Nico begot a child Ari. Edith tells how after Alian discovered that Nico was pregnant and disowned her child, asked Edith to choose between her son Alian and Nico's child Ari. Edith chose to take care of the child Ari and justifies it saying, "Alian is a grown-up and he can take care of himself but Ari is a little child and needs a mother". She sure didn`t want the child to be with Nico as all she would do is feed little Ari with potato chips. There is also an interesting narration from the grown up Ari (who is now thirty years old and lives in Paris) who claims that it was his own mother Nico that initiated him into heroin when he was eighteen and went to Manchester to live with Nico.
No doubt the footage that Ofteringer manages to uncover is exhaustive - ranging from French TV commercials, to performance pieces of the Velvet Under ground's ironic debut at the American Psychiatric Convention to her debut in films in the legendary film maker Federico Fellini's classic 'La Dolce Vita' (1960) as a blonde model to her heydays of association with Andy Warhol and her final days of drugs, decadence and eventual but eventless demise. With clever and snappy editing, all this footage is intertwined with the interviews and juxtaposed with music and dialogue to create a fast paced pop collage. For the most part, the film does take an unbiased and disinterested stance but sometimes strays into irritating `show-me-some-sympathy' portrayals with words like 'she is alone' flying across images of Nico.
Much like the ambiguous title of the film 'Nico Icon', Ofteringer portrays Nico in an ambiguous manner - as a person whose life was mostly filled with sadness and despair but who actually derived pleasure from it all.
Rating: On the SuperNova Scale ***1/2 / *****
(The Supernova Scale: - dud; * poor; ** fair; *** good; **** excellent;
***** memorable)
The Velvet Underground ----------------------
This rock and roll band was formed in 1965 with the initial line-up of Lou Reed, Maureen Tucker on drums, John Cale and Sterling Morrison on guitars. Later on, Doug and Billy Yule replaced John Cale and Maureen Tucker respective ly and Andy Warhol, who produced VU's early records, added on Nico as a second singer and organ player. VU released their first self titled record in 1967 and made another three studio albums in the next three years, none of which cracked the Top 100 charts. Two members John Cale and Lou Reed went on to be popular and the other two remained in total obscurity. Four managers are in litigation about Nico's royalties and her son Ari is also trying to get his share. But during those five hard-fought and hard-luck years, VU had an un- deniable influence on a whole generation of youngsters. It`s true that hardly anyone bought any records of VU. But ironically, those who did, went on to form their own bands - David Bowie, Patti Smith, Talking Heads, Iggy Pop, R.E.M., U2, Henry Rollins, Sonic Youth... The list is endless and filled with the super stars of today's rock. Recently, the record label Polydor released remastered editions of many of VU's albums.
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews