Photograph
Nico, Alan Wise
2017

picture is a still from film Nico 1988

The film Nico 1988 was made after Alan died but he helped to launch it and it is half about him - and it is an interesting perspective on him.

Its Italian director, Susanna Nicchiarelli, spent some time talking to Alan in 2014, and to other Manchester-based observers of Nico on countdown to her death in 1988.

The film was released in 2017 in Italy and in 2018 worldwide. It went down better in the rest of the world than it did here. In the interests of creative freedom, Susanna turned Nico's manager into a character called Richard and got him played by the Scots actor John Gordon Sinclair. In Manchester, this was seen as bizarre casting. And a lot of the favourite local angles, such as John Cooper Clarke as Nico's flatmate, were ignored altogether.

But if you cared more about Nico than about Manchester, it was fair enough.

The character Richard is a lot quieter and self-effacing than Dr Demetrius, the manager in James Young's riotous memoir of the Nico years, Songs They Never Play On The Radio. But there is a recognisable truth in Sinclair's sympathetic portrayal of a northern Englishman in love with a damaged genius who gives him the runaround.

Tthe actress playing Nico, Trine Dyrholm, did a good job with the character and the music and it all scored quite high on the review sites.