Nico Icon Movie Review

While watching Susanne Ofteringer's Nico Icon, I kept asking myself, “Why the heck did she make a documentary about THIS thumping bore of a mannequin whose chief distinction was looking good in designer originals and whose toneless singing voice appealed mainly to audiences who must have been as strung out on heroin as she was?!” If you're going to make a movie about a one-time junkie, why not an interesting and outrageous one like Marianne Faithfull, who could and can act and sing rings around Nico, and is still alive!? Hmmm…maybe that's it. Maybe the fact that Nico DIED after falling off a bicycle in the south of France made the storyline simple: “Beautiful Selfish Model Sleeps with Famous Men (Alain Delon, Jim Morrison, Jackson Browne) and Goes to Hell, But Not Before She Shares Her Legacy with Her Son by Turning Him on to Heroin.” Four of the voices in Jean Stein's biography of Edie Sedgwick are also in Nico Icon (Danny Fields, Paul Morrisey, Billy Name, Viva). Does that mean we can expect more unriveting movies on all the other non-luminaries in Andy Warhol's Factory? Hope not! At least this story of a woman who loved no one (and vice versa) is short. And the archival footage may be of some interest if you happen to be a ‘60s clipaholic. Yeah, if I get to vote on a movie about a ‘60s icon, please make a great one about super diva Marianne Faithfull and let Rosanna Arquette be the star! Faithfull's live concerts (with songs from Noel Coward, Harry Nilsson, and Kurt Weill) are something to see, hear, and treasure well into the 21st century!

1995 (R) 75m/C GE D: Susanne Ofteringer; W: Susanne Ofteringer; C: Judith Kaufmann. VHS, DVD