Nico Icon

"Nico Icon" is a movie which will not satisfy Nico's fans cause the essential,that is to say,the musical side ,is minimal .Both her short stint with the Velvet and her solo career are botched.

On the other hand,we hear Edith Boulogne, actor Alain Delon's mother talk for a long time of her grandson Ari -who appears himself too- .There was a world between Nico, an avant-garde artist and a simple woman such as Mrs Boulogne who complains "cause she was always feeding him with crisps ".The boy seems to despise his grandma who raised him though.

In his biography of Delon (2000),(I do not know if the book has been translated into English) Bernard Violet devoted the end of a chapter to Nico's son: "Le cas "Ari Boulogne" ".

This documentary is worth watching if you're interested in Nico or related subjects (my interest in the Velvet Underground is what got me to watch it, and VU are so important to modern music history that it's worth watching just for that), but it is seriously lacking in several respects.

First of all, the movie is only 67 minutes long and ends too abruptly. Another half-hour of more extensive interviews would have greatly strengthened the film. Maybe people like Lou Reed or the surviving members of The Doors simply refused to take part in the movie, but the absence of their opinions leaves definite holes in the story. In the film's defense, maybe there's just not much elaboration anyone can give about Nico--she was pretty, had a striking voice, and was a depressive junkie; that about sums up the impression I'm left with (which probably isn't all the film's fault!). But couldn't they have at least given us Lou Reed's take on Nico, even if it was only via anecdotes shared by others?

The creation of her solo songs & albums is very glossed-over. Suddenly Andy Warhol's crew is talking about hearing a single of Nico's--the viewer is left to wonder, "Well, when & how did that recording come about?!" We are shown pictures of her solo albums while clips of her songs are played, but that's about it--no real discussion of the circumstances surrounding the writing, recording, promotion, dates of release, etc. It's left unclear how much of the actual CREATION of those songs was done by Nico herself--did she learn to play any instruments, did she direct other music writers to produce what she was envisioning? Maybe these things were addressed and I simply missed them, but if so, it was a sentence or two at most, which might have been inaudible--

--which leads us into the problem of the poor sound quality; the music sometimes drowns out the poorly recorded interviews, so that when the interviewees lapse into softer voices, mutters & mumbles (their various accents add to this problem), it can be very hard to understand what is being said. Also annoying is the cheesy method of occasionally superimposing words on the screen as they are spoken by interviewees or sung by the soundtrack. This technique feels cheap and superficial--like a commercial trying to convince us that what is being said is important or deep.

Overall, it's definitely worth seeing if you like documentaries & music/pop history, but not a great documentary by any means. I'm almost tempted to go back and change my vote to 6, but I think I'll leave it at 7 because I did enjoy watching it. Worth renting, but not worth owning.

i can see how anyone who doesn't already enjoy nico wouldn't enjoy this film, but i thought it was great. i was first introduced to nico via her work with the velvet underground, and while nico herself isn't a very sympathetic "character" her life was extraordinarily interesting. i didn't think the filmmaker tried to her make her more lovable than she was, but instead tried to portray her as she was; interesting as well as cold, shallow but artistic. what made her unique and fascinating also made her a poor mother and an isolated individual, but her voice was different as was what she had to say. if you have an interest in her music and her work with andy warhol's factory, then i think this is a movie you'll enjoy.

this film is truly anything but a real documentary. How anyone could take as interesting a subject as Nico and so incomprehensively make a film that purports to go inside her life is beyond me? It seems like this film was thrown together at best. I had no understanding of the real chronology of Nico's life, as the timeline jumps around repeatedly. The interviews seem largely to rely on one interview with John Cale, and it's just quite clear that the filmmakers didn't do any research whatsoever. Instead the filmmaker's come up with the dull technique of using superimposed titles throughout the film to highlight the un-insightful interviews. So superficial, so dull-looking, so without any kind of understanding of what must go into a posthumous documentary that it is really sad. A wasted opportunity. Shooting photographs for an hour or so and playing the Velvet Underground and Nico album over it is hardly the stuff of insightful or talented documentaries.

Came to this film, with a few good recommendations, but no knowledge at all about the woman, Christa Paffgen (NICO) about whom this documentary is based.

NICO, a young German woman, model, created an image in conjunction with Andy Warhol and his group as an asexual junkie. As a biography, the film is weak, short on information, with a limited and jaded perspective.

As a tribute, it fails miserably. I'm still uncertain where ICON fits in the whole picture aside from looking good in the title. There is little substance in the film to suggest she 'earned' any sort of recognition, stature, or approval from anyone but miscreants and lost souls. From my vantagepoint her life seems little different than many misguided college youth who gave up their lives to confusion and drugs, far too early. It's a tragic tale, I guess, but far from distinctive.

The whole deal is some sort of inside joke and I sit outside, unfortunately--maybe it all got lost in the translation.