Nico was born Christa Päffgen on October 16th, 1938 in Cologne, Germany. She embarked upon the first of her many careers at the age of 14 as a model in Berlin. An assignment in Ibiza, Spain for the photographer Herbert Tobias lead to her being christened “Nico” after the Greek filmmaker, Nico Papatakis. In the late 50s, she moved to Paris and quickly became a fashion icon before landing roles in Alberto Lattuada’s LA TEMPESTA and Rudolph Maté’s FOR THE FIRST TIME. Her first major part came thanks to Jean Becker, son of French filmmaker, Jacques Becker, who met her on an assignment in Paris and promptly gave her a role in his next film, UN NOMME LA ROCCA. After appearing in a memorable scene in Federico Fellini’s LA DOLCE VITA, she began studying acting in earnest, taking classes with Lee Strasberg in New York. There she met the pop culture icon, Andy Warhol, who indoctrinated her into the Factory scene and cast her in a number of his collaborations with the director Paul Morrisey, including CHELSEA GIRLS and IMITATION OF CHRIST. It was at that time, in the 1960s, that she also began fronting as leading vocalist in Andy Warhol’s art project-cum-pop band, The Velvet Underground.
Distancing herself from Warhol to focus on her solo career in the late 60s, she began traveling throughout Europe, meeting Philippe Garrel in 1968. Nico appeared in 7 of Garrel’s films throughout the course of their 10-year relationship, sometimes playing herself, sometimes in character (although, as in so many of Garrel’s films, it’s oftentimes difficult to tell which is which). The first film by Garrel in which Nico appeared was LA CICATRICE INTERIEURE (THE INNER SCAR), made in 1972. An experimental film shot in Egypt, Italy, Iceland and New Mexico and described as a “masterpiece” by no less than Henri Langlois of the Cinematheque Français, it features Nico, her son (fathered by Alain Delon) and Garrel in starring roles set to songs from her solo album, THE DESERT SHORE. Two years later, she appeared in Garrel’s LES HAUTES SOLITUDES, a silent, black-and-white film featuring Jean Seberg, the Iowa-born actress who became a key figure of the French New Wave following her role opposite Jean Belmondo in Jean-luc Godard’s BREATHLESS. In 1975 and 1976, Nico acted in two more feature films made by Garrel, UN ANGE PASSE and BERCEAU DE CRISTAL, and then again, this time opposite Maria Schneider (of LAST TANGO IN PARIS fame) in Garrel’s VOYAGE AU JARDIN DES MORTS. After 1978, their relationship began to crumble in the wake of her heroin addiction and Nico appeared in only one more film by Garrel, LE BLUE DES ORIGINS, a silent 50-minute avant-garde character study filmed with a hand-cranked camera starring Nico, Zouzou, Philippe Garrel himself and Seberg in her last film appearance before her suicide.
J’ENTENDS PLUS LA GUITARE opens in Positano, the Italian city where Nico and Garrel first met at the home of Tina Aumont (the daughter of Hollywood’s exotic Technicolor queen, the Dominican Republic-born Maria Montez, and an actress who starred in Fellini’s CASANOVA and Minneli’s NINA) and Frédéric Pardo (a French surrealist painter, godson of Jean-Paul Sartre and the model for the young “decorator” of walls and canvases in Garrel’s LES AMANTS REGULIERS). The year was 1968 and Pardo was filming an experimental, behind-the-scenes look at Garrel’s LE LIT DE LA VIERGE, a film featuring the song “The Falconer,” which Nico had just finished recording. Garrel later memorialized the coastal city in the LE VENT DE LA NUIT in the scene in which the lonely Serge stops along an Italian highway to survey the mountainside buildings while the young sculptor, Paul, snaps a picture of the boats floating in the harbor.
Yet despite Garrel’s longing for that era, his aversion to anything approaching an overtly glamorized portrayal of his time spent there with Nico is very much in evidence in the bare-bones style of J’ENTENDS PLUS LA GUITARE, in which long stretches of time and changes in location occur abruptly and without exposition. The photographic compositions are pared down to their essentials, consisting mostly of close-ups and medium shots, a far cry from the ornate camera movements and elaborate special effects of his early work in films like LA REVELATEUR and LE LIT DE LA VIERGE. GUITARE’s structure can essentially be broken down into three acts: The first section, shot on location in Positano, is leisurely paced and drenched in golden, sun-baked hues, shot mostly outdoors in this “town of stairways.” The second portion of the film following their return to Paris, in which Nico becomes increasingly withdrawn due to her drug abuse, is suffocatingly claustrophobic, set primarily indoors, with darkly lit backgrounds of peeling brown wallpaper. The final section, in which domesticity intrudes on Gerard’s life, is photographed in pointedly drab settings in unadorned two-shots.
J’ENTENDS PLUS LA GUITARE opens with a woman, Marianne, sleeping peacefully. She awakes to find her lover, Gerard, staring out at the view below. Gazing up at him from the bed she enigmatically intones: “The man. The sea.” This marks the moment at which the couple’s love is in full bloom, but as the story progresses, finding its way back to Paris, their tenderness towards one another begins to wilt. Johanna ter Steege, a blond-haired Dutch actress known for her roles in George Sluizer’s THE VANISHING, Robert Altman’s VINCENT AND THEO and a Garrel film made two years later, LA NAISSANCE DE L’AMOUR, plays the character of Marianne, a role clearly modeled on Nico, although that’s not to say there’s a one-to-one correlation between the details of Nico’s life and the character in the film. Steege is far too accomplished an actress and Garrel much too sensitive a director to have her simply ape Nico’s mannerisms. Rather, Steege’s character is allowed room to carve out her own character within the storyline.
Gerard’s character, based on Garrel himself in a not always flattering portrayal, is played by Benoît Régent, who prior to J’ENTENDS performed as one of the leads in New Waver Jacques Rivette’s LA BAND DES QUATRE and later was featured, along with Juliette Binoche, in Krzysztof Kieslowski’s TROIS COULEUR’S: BLUE, part of the director’s “Three Colors” trilogy. The film also introduces us to another French couple living together in Positano, Lola and Martin, friends of Marianne and Gerard who are loosely modeled on Aumont and Pardo, the latter a close friend of Garrel’s at the time. Lola, whose talk of a film in Rome is a veiled allusion to Tina Aumont’s career at the time, is played by the French actress Mireille Perrier, a fixture of Leos Carax’s early work, particularly his debut, BOY MEETS GIRLS, and MAUVAIS SANG. Pierrer was also the star of Garrel’s 1985 film, ELLE A PASSE TANT D’HEURES SOUS LES SUNLIGHTS…, dedicated to his late friend and mentor, the great French filmmaker, Jean Eustache.
Martin’s character alluding to Frédéric Pardo is performed by Yann Collette, a French actor whose loss of an eye at the age of 16 has resulted in the accomplished actor being mostly typecast as a villain. Garrel’s choice of Collette in a sympathetic role here speaks to his unconventional approach as a filmmaker. Another actress of note seen briefly in LA GUITARE, Brigitte Sy, had her film debut in LA DEROBADE, directed by Daniel Duval, the same actor who played Serge, Garrel’s stand-in in LE VENT DE LA NUIT. Sy also performed in a number of Garrel’s in the 1980s, LIBERTE, LA NUIT and LES BAISERS DE SECOURS, the latter an intensely autobiographical story about a director casting a film using his real-life family members that alludes to Garrel’s troubled marriage at the time. LES BAISERS was made immediately prior to J’ENTENDS and was in the middle of filming when Nico died in 1988. Two years later, Garrel paid tribute to her by dedicating this film to her memory.
-- Jameson West, Associate Programmer, Austin Film Society
Distancing herself from Warhol to focus on her solo career in the late 60s, she began traveling throughout Europe, meeting Philippe Garrel in 1968. Nico appeared in 7 of Garrel’s films throughout the course of their 10-year relationship, sometimes playing herself, sometimes in character (although, as in so many of Garrel’s films, it’s oftentimes difficult to tell which is which). The first film by Garrel in which Nico appeared was LA CICATRICE INTERIEURE (THE INNER SCAR), made in 1972. An experimental film shot in Egypt, Italy, Iceland and New Mexico and described as a “masterpiece” by no less than Henri Langlois of the Cinematheque Français, it features Nico, her son (fathered by Alain Delon) and Garrel in starring roles set to songs from her solo album, THE DESERT SHORE. Two years later, she appeared in Garrel’s LES HAUTES SOLITUDES, a silent, black-and-white film featuring Jean Seberg, the Iowa-born actress who became a key figure of the French New Wave following her role opposite Jean Belmondo in Jean-luc Godard’s BREATHLESS. In 1975 and 1976, Nico acted in two more feature films made by Garrel, UN ANGE PASSE and BERCEAU DE CRISTAL, and then again, this time opposite Maria Schneider (of LAST TANGO IN PARIS fame) in Garrel’s VOYAGE AU JARDIN DES MORTS. After 1978, their relationship began to crumble in the wake of her heroin addiction and Nico appeared in only one more film by Garrel, LE BLUE DES ORIGINS, a silent 50-minute avant-garde character study filmed with a hand-cranked camera starring Nico, Zouzou, Philippe Garrel himself and Seberg in her last film appearance before her suicide.
J’ENTENDS PLUS LA GUITARE opens in Positano, the Italian city where Nico and Garrel first met at the home of Tina Aumont (the daughter of Hollywood’s exotic Technicolor queen, the Dominican Republic-born Maria Montez, and an actress who starred in Fellini’s CASANOVA and Minneli’s NINA) and Frédéric Pardo (a French surrealist painter, godson of Jean-Paul Sartre and the model for the young “decorator” of walls and canvases in Garrel’s LES AMANTS REGULIERS). The year was 1968 and Pardo was filming an experimental, behind-the-scenes look at Garrel’s LE LIT DE LA VIERGE, a film featuring the song “The Falconer,” which Nico had just finished recording. Garrel later memorialized the coastal city in the LE VENT DE LA NUIT in the scene in which the lonely Serge stops along an Italian highway to survey the mountainside buildings while the young sculptor, Paul, snaps a picture of the boats floating in the harbor.
Yet despite Garrel’s longing for that era, his aversion to anything approaching an overtly glamorized portrayal of his time spent there with Nico is very much in evidence in the bare-bones style of J’ENTENDS PLUS LA GUITARE, in which long stretches of time and changes in location occur abruptly and without exposition. The photographic compositions are pared down to their essentials, consisting mostly of close-ups and medium shots, a far cry from the ornate camera movements and elaborate special effects of his early work in films like LA REVELATEUR and LE LIT DE LA VIERGE. GUITARE’s structure can essentially be broken down into three acts: The first section, shot on location in Positano, is leisurely paced and drenched in golden, sun-baked hues, shot mostly outdoors in this “town of stairways.” The second portion of the film following their return to Paris, in which Nico becomes increasingly withdrawn due to her drug abuse, is suffocatingly claustrophobic, set primarily indoors, with darkly lit backgrounds of peeling brown wallpaper. The final section, in which domesticity intrudes on Gerard’s life, is photographed in pointedly drab settings in unadorned two-shots.
J’ENTENDS PLUS LA GUITARE opens with a woman, Marianne, sleeping peacefully. She awakes to find her lover, Gerard, staring out at the view below. Gazing up at him from the bed she enigmatically intones: “The man. The sea.” This marks the moment at which the couple’s love is in full bloom, but as the story progresses, finding its way back to Paris, their tenderness towards one another begins to wilt. Johanna ter Steege, a blond-haired Dutch actress known for her roles in George Sluizer’s THE VANISHING, Robert Altman’s VINCENT AND THEO and a Garrel film made two years later, LA NAISSANCE DE L’AMOUR, plays the character of Marianne, a role clearly modeled on Nico, although that’s not to say there’s a one-to-one correlation between the details of Nico’s life and the character in the film. Steege is far too accomplished an actress and Garrel much too sensitive a director to have her simply ape Nico’s mannerisms. Rather, Steege’s character is allowed room to carve out her own character within the storyline.
Gerard’s character, based on Garrel himself in a not always flattering portrayal, is played by Benoît Régent, who prior to J’ENTENDS performed as one of the leads in New Waver Jacques Rivette’s LA BAND DES QUATRE and later was featured, along with Juliette Binoche, in Krzysztof Kieslowski’s TROIS COULEUR’S: BLUE, part of the director’s “Three Colors” trilogy. The film also introduces us to another French couple living together in Positano, Lola and Martin, friends of Marianne and Gerard who are loosely modeled on Aumont and Pardo, the latter a close friend of Garrel’s at the time. Lola, whose talk of a film in Rome is a veiled allusion to Tina Aumont’s career at the time, is played by the French actress Mireille Perrier, a fixture of Leos Carax’s early work, particularly his debut, BOY MEETS GIRLS, and MAUVAIS SANG. Pierrer was also the star of Garrel’s 1985 film, ELLE A PASSE TANT D’HEURES SOUS LES SUNLIGHTS…, dedicated to his late friend and mentor, the great French filmmaker, Jean Eustache.
Martin’s character alluding to Frédéric Pardo is performed by Yann Collette, a French actor whose loss of an eye at the age of 16 has resulted in the accomplished actor being mostly typecast as a villain. Garrel’s choice of Collette in a sympathetic role here speaks to his unconventional approach as a filmmaker. Another actress of note seen briefly in LA GUITARE, Brigitte Sy, had her film debut in LA DEROBADE, directed by Daniel Duval, the same actor who played Serge, Garrel’s stand-in in LE VENT DE LA NUIT. Sy also performed in a number of Garrel’s in the 1980s, LIBERTE, LA NUIT and LES BAISERS DE SECOURS, the latter an intensely autobiographical story about a director casting a film using his real-life family members that alludes to Garrel’s troubled marriage at the time. LES BAISERS was made immediately prior to J’ENTENDS and was in the middle of filming when Nico died in 1988. Two years later, Garrel paid tribute to her by dedicating this film to her memory.
-- Jameson West, Associate Programmer, Austin Film Society
