Film Forum

Perhaps you weren’t around when Nico sang with Lou Reed and The Velvet Underground during the ‘60s, and maybe you missed the acclaimed documentary on the dazzling blonde chanteuse, NICO ICON (which Film Forum premiered in 1996). Now you can catch up with her in this riveting drama of her final years (1986-88) -- as she performs in black leather leggings and boots throughout Eastern Europe, her entourage a bevy of sycophants who want to hear about the glory years she’s desperate to flee. Still very much “the priestess of darkness,” her smoky, heroin-infused voice is brilliantly re-created by Danish actress Trine Dyrholm in this story of counterculture dystopia gone to seed, and worse.

Presented with support from the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation Fund

ITALY / UK    2017    93 MINS.    IN ENGLISH    MAGNOLIA PICTURES

(Le) Poisson Rouge will hold a Nico tribute concert on Thurs, August 2 at 7:00pm. All concert attendees can see NICO, 1988 at Film Forum for just $9! Redeem this discount by showing your order confirmation at the Film Forum box office for all Mon-Thurs shows.

Reviews

“Brilliantly unsentimental. Fully captures the faded charisma of the woman whose life reads like a Who’s Who of the New York mid-century art scene. Every lyric strums with such anger and regret. Gray and gritty and jonesing with nervous energy. Crystel Fournier’s cool, stark visuals punch up the storm-cloud intensity of Ms. Dyrholm’s voice. This is music to play at the end of the world.”  
– Jeannette Catsoulis, The New York Times

“A precise, piercing study of the star’s last years… pouring all her pain and exuberance into music that she doesn’t care whether you take or leave. Played with an inquisitive weariness by the excellent Dyrholm.  (Her) furious power in the best concert sequences have more fire than I’ve ever heard from the real Nico. NICO 1988 offers all I want from this kind of movie: a sense of what time with someone unknowable might have been like.”
– Alan Scherstuhl, The Village Voice

“★★★★.
Extraordinary. This is a reclamation… [Nico is] granted an inner life, a sense of who this woman was beneath the mask. [Trine Dyrholm] pours herself into the role with a scary intensity and a lack of self-conscious, look-at-me theatricality.”
– David Fear, Rolling Stone

“Dyrholm is excellent. She captures Nico’s essential nonchalance while forming a captivating portrait of early aging and addiction. Its most uplifting point being an uncharacteristically energetic performance of My Heart Is Empty.”
– Margaret Barton-Fumo, Film Comment

“Trine Dyrholm (gives a) harrowing, pitch-perfect performance as the mercurial German singer.”
– David Alm, Forbes

“Trine Dyrholm is phenomenal in this enigmatic biopic. NICO, 1988 is never going to be confused for a hagiography… There’s something beautiful and vaguely redemptive to the way the film gives the singer one last chance to change her ways.”
– David Ehrlich, IndieWire

“Surprisingly authentic, with a zombie-pitch-perfect performance by Trine Dyrholm… Her hate erupts like a rock ‘n’ roll volcano. NICO, 1988 understands the mystique of her anti-mystique… (as) the Teutonic android chanteuse of the Velvet Underground. Dyrholm’s performance is a powerhouse of authenticity. Her moroseness is mesmerizing, but she also gives Nico a terse intelligence, and her singing is uncanny.”
– Owen Gleiberman, Variety

“As wary and lived-in as its subject. [Trine] Dyrholm is extraordinary in the leading role, utterly credible; she carries off both the enigma and the history, much of which is carried in her eyes… She also does the singing herself, and quite convincingly.”
– Jason Bailey, Flavorwire