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Initially making her mark in the world as a singer performing first with the Odense orchestra in Denmark and then placing third in the Danish Melodi Grand Prix as lead singer to her group, Trine & The Moonlighters, Dyrholm them embarked on a solo music career, recording a CD of her own songs.\u00a0 Thereafter, she moved into theatre and by her early teens was garnering acclaim for her screen work as an actress.\u00a0 Acclaimed actress worldwide, hit recording artist in Europe, Dyrholm’s talents speak for themselves.\u00a0 So it comes as no surprise to see her slide into the role of\u00a0 Christa Paffgen aka Nico in NICO, 1988.<\/p>\n
Christa, best known as Nico, once lead singer and chanteuse to the Velvet Underground, was a complicated and complex woman.\u00a0 A German singer\/songwriter, musician, model and even actress, Christa was raised outside Berlin during World War II; an inescapable experience that seemed to haunt her throughout her life.\u00a0 By age 16, she was one of the most sought after models in Europe, only to walk away from a lucrative contract with Coco Chanel and cross the Pond to America where she began performing as a singer.\u00a0 In 1966, her life took yet another when she was discovered by Andy Warhol who brought her into Velvet Underground, the group he was managing at the time.\u00a0 Known as “Nico”, her musical playmates of the day included soon-to-be legends like Lou Reed, Bob Dylan, Jimmy Page, Brian Jones and Jackson Browne.\u00a0 But that life wasn’t what Christa was looking for and it didn’t take long for her to venture out as a single, making the club rounds and recording albums.\u00a0 Over the next decade,\u00a0 the delineation between Nico and Christa became more pronounced.\u00a0 Battles with her record labels, producers and managers were as well known as was her heroin addiction.\u00a0 “Nico” slowly disappeared as Christa’s own determination and sense of self began to take hold.\u00a0 Gone were the bleached blonde goddess tresses.\u00a0 Black became her signature color.\u00a0 She became known as “Priestess of Darkness”.\u00a0 In the final decade of her life, after being almost destroyed by her addictions, she found a renewed interest in herself and music, including reconnecting with her son – also now a heroin addict – whom she had given over to his paternal grandparents to raise when he was just four-years old.<\/p>\n
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Written and directed by Susanna Nicchiarelli, NICO, 1988 focuses on the final two years of Christa’s life.\u00a0 Unlike the voyeuristic 1995 documentary “Nico Icon”, here with NICO, 1988 Nicchiarelli and Dyrholm dive into the psyche of Christa as she distances and distinguishes herself from the persona of Nico.\u00a0 Nico is a character Christa plays, not who she is.\u00a0 \u00a0Mesmerizing and fascinating, it is thanks to Dyrholm that we are drawn into Christa’s psyche with an understanding of her demons, her conflict, her emptiness, and her struggle to find “happiness” or at least contentment.\u00a0 Dyrholm is transformative, enthralling, captivating with a quiet intensity as she captures the essence of both Christa and Nico; one moment commanding a crowd of “ravers” in Communist Czechoslovakia while hating every minute of being near “Communists” (As we see in the film, Christa’s roots of her upbringing in Nazi Germany run deep throughout her life.), while in the next, vulnerable yet raging, looking for her next fix, and then in quiet moments alone, yearning for a second chance with the son she gave up so long ago.\u00a0 The result is award-worthy and indelible.<\/p>\n
I spoke with TRINE DYRHOLM in this exclusive interview.\u00a0 With palpable enthusiasm for this performance and for her craft, Trine gives us some insight into how she became Christa and Nico in NICO, 1988 . . .<\/p>\n
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Trine, what I love about NICO, 1988 is how you constructed Christa at this stage of her life. There’s this darkness, and I’m curious how you found that darkness within yourself.\u00a0 But, also, as we travel through the last two years\u00a0<\/strong>of her life and get to 1988, light is shining through the darkness.\u00a0 That journey over such a short time span is amazing.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n The key with the character was definitely to find a way to sing the songs.\u00a0 And we treated all the songs as monologues, basically an\u00a0emotional state of mind throughout the film.\u00a0 It was very important not to make an imitation but to do our version of Nico in the spirit of, but still with my voice.\u00a0 \u00a0I was a singer back then when I was very young.\u00a0 When I was a teenager I was in an original song contest, so I thought I could use that background in a way for the work.\u00a0 And then the music helped me define the darkness.\u00a0 \u00a0What I always find important is to make cracks in the character where you invite the audience into the character.\u00a0 What are they struggling with? And I think that Nico is struggling with a huge existential loneliness.<\/p>\n And I think that is why we make cinema.\u00a0 That is why we make art; to share all the existential things that we can’t really talk about, we don’t have words for that.\u00a0 But, we are sharing them and it’s our burden as human beings. She had an extreme life.\u00a0 But, what you can connect with, where you identify is with the struggling.\u00a0 And, I just try to find these things where you understand and identify with an artist that wants to be respected for her art and not her beauty. With a mom that is so afraid of losing a\u00a0child, and she’s not the best mom to begin with.\u00a0 \u00a0All these kind of things that you can identify with in small moments. That’s how I work. And that’s, of course, a bit different because this is a real person. But, Susanna [Nicchiarelli] said to me when I met her, “You don’t look like Nico. You don’t sing like Nico. But, I want you to play the part because I think you have the right spirit to play the main character. So, let’s do our version.”\u00a0 \u00a0That way it would be not only a film about Nico but a universal film about any mom, any woman.<\/p>\n How exciting is it for you as an actress to do this narrative about a female musical star?\u00a0 We’ve seen plenty of biopics on male rock stars before, on groups before, but with few exceptions, nobody really does a narrative about the females.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n That’s right! That’s right!\u00a0 \u00a0It’s not often that you have complex female characters that are not likable.\u00a0 I mean, she’s not obviously likable this person, and I really like it because, she’s just very contradictive, she’s so complex. And, I think more of that, please!<\/p>\n <\/p>\n You said something that I find very key.\u00a0 That you and Susanna treated the songs like monologues.\u00a0 And it very much felt that way while you were singing them with your cadence, with the rhythm that you established.\u00a0 Was that difficult to find that specific rhythm for the songs?<\/strong><\/p>\n I think that it was the key work.\u00a0 We used some time in the studio trying out different things.\u00a0 And, I’ve done a lot of experimental theater on stage where I use my voice in different ways and screamed and did whatever with my voice.\u00a0 So, I’m not afraid of trying out. But, we did a lot of different versions of the songs and some of them were too much.\u00a0 \u00a0Then one day we found a way that was true to the character.\u00a0 And, in a way, it was a physical thing also.\u00a0 So, after working with the songs, then I tried to talk like the character, and then I got the wig on and then the costume.\u00a0 That was the way it happened. It started with the music.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n You mentioned the wig and the costume and all.\u00a0 And I have to say the attention to detail in the early parts of the film. The dirt around the fingernails, I thought was fabulous. It really added something else. Another layer to who Christa was and I love that.<\/strong><\/p>\n I was inspired by a lot of interviews that I saw but also a little clip, for instance.\u00a0 It’s also seen in the film where she is, just right before “Nature Boy” where she is putting make-up on and she’s shooting up also. And she talks about if she’s beautiful or not.\u00a0 There’s a scene in the documentary where she is with the band and around and then you suddenly see her, she’s destroyed, she’s totally destroyed; but, then she sits with a little mirror and puts on make-up.\u00a0 It is such a contradictive image in a way.\u00a0 \u00a0But, I was very inspired by\u00a0a sentence that she said in an interview.\u00a0 When she was asked, “Do you regret anything?”, then Nico answered, “No, I don’t regret anything other than I was born a woman and not a man.”\u00a0 And it was very inspiring because it tells you a lot of things about what she’s struggling with.\u00a0 She’s so beautiful and she didn’t fit that image.\u00a0 And, that was too narrowed. Defined by men all the time and she wanted to be respected for her art.\u00a0 She had this deep voice that didn’t fit the blonde lady. She didn’t fit! It was very inspiring to work with this character.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I’ve got to ask you about working opposite John Gordon Sinclair. That dynamic between the two of you. The camera would pick up your eyes.\u00a0 There was a great love in those eyes as you’re looking at him.\u00a0 And there was always love.\u00a0 This guy was so in love with Christa, it was beyond belief.\u00a0 But,<\/strong> yet, that wall was there.\u00a0 How did you work with John to develop that chemistry because\u00a0it simmers<\/strong>?\u00a0 It’s like just before a pot boils throughout the whole film and that was amazing to watch.\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n It was easy.\u00a0 I thought he was so wonderful, John Gordon Sinclair.\u00a0 He is hilarious.\u00a0 We had so much fun. I cried of laughter all the time together with him.\u00a0 He is amazing.\u00a0 And, I really like the relationship that they have.\u00a0 I love all the scenes that Susanna had me do.\u00a0 It was just joyful and very emotional to rehearse together with John.\u00a0 He’s a great actor, great actor, and such a gentleman.\u00a0 An amazing man.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n And, of course, then Sandor [Funtek] comes in as Christa’s son, Ari.\u00a0 The heart could break watching this scene as you’re on the bus and he’s laying on your shoulder and you’re pulling the coat over him like a baby in his crib. These tiny little touches that you added really conveyed the conflict within Christa; as to who she wants to be as opposed to how everybody in the world has made her.<\/strong><\/p>\n Yeah, or how it turned out. And there’s a combination of a lot of things.<\/p>\n What did you personally take away from the experience of making this film, Trine?\u00a0 This is a real person who does have a legacy that many people know and that’s something different than a fictional character. So I’m curious what you took away from the experience of bringing the essence of Christa to life<\/strong><\/p>\n For me, this film is about identity.\u00a0 It’s about finding your way in life.\u00a0 And, I am very grateful that I had the chance to learn about Nico’s music and her life story.\u00a0 \u00a0I can’t say in one word what I took out of it, but the combination of the material,\u00a0 Nico, the music, and the meeting I had with Susanna and all the other actors, it is by far the biggest challenge I’ve had in my career.\u00a0 \u00a0I was in doubt every day every day whether it was too much or it was good enough.\u00a0 It has been also the greatest experience to make this film and I’m very proud of it.\u00a0 I really hope that people will connect to it.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n interview by debbie elias, 08\/03\/2018<\/p>\n <\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/behindthelensonline.net\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/nico-5.jpg\")
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