I saw this new film last week with friends. None of us knew much about the film, it had just opened, but it was Nico, about whom good books have been written, and who sang three songs on the first Velvet Underground album (the banana one). We knew that Lou Reed hated her, that Andy Warhol added her to his house band perversely, and our favorite song of hers was a cover of Jackson Browne’s melancholy These Days. Rael thought the trailer was a stinker.
But the movie was very good. Most notably, Trine Dyrholm acts and sings as if she’s living the part of the mordant junkie who can’t help but talk about how she feels and why she lives. But the movie makes excellent narrative choices that pile up, like leading with Nico’s These Days, and then moving on to her much broader music made in an atmosphere of chaos and imprecision.
This review on Slate by Carl Wilson does a good job of explaining the film, and puts it into the context of many other movie bio pix that don’t follow the form of Ray and Walk the Line. Read that, see the movie, and I’ll leave you with this. Not a spoiler, but a game changer in the film’s narrative, surprisingly enough.
My band The Addictions opened for Nico at that pop up club in Chelsea
Was the club called Mother’s?
Yes, I believe it was
James Chance was also on the bill
I agree with the reviewer about music flicks Yawn. Has anybody seen “Walk Hard”? It sounds funny. I saw the trailer for the Freddy Mercury movie and it looks terrible, but then I never could stand Queen from the time I was prepared to like them but was forced to flee from their performance at the Uris Theater when they opened for Mott the Hoople. They were pure hackwork, then and pretty much ever since. I kinda like their genre-exercise rockabilly tune “Crazy Little Thing Called Love.” The seemingly eternal shelf life of “Bohemian Rhapsody” is right up there in my HUH? hall of fame.
I won’t say you’ll love this Gene, but it does something different and the actress who plays Nico is fantastic.
As for Queen, I admire the crap out of A Night at the Opera, and everything else I’ve heard bugs me. Except that everything else also includes We Will Rock You and Under Pressure, which are pretty gigantic. And I bet I’m forgetting something other than the magnificent I’m In Love With My Car.