An Affair to Disremember: Pallaoro Explores the Unbearable Bleakness of Being
Love is hardly a many-splendored thing in The Echo Chamber, the fourth feature directed by Andrea Palloro (and his first from a screenplay not originally conceived by himself). Based on the final script written by the legendary Bernardo Bertolucci before his death, Palloaro revises (along with scribes Ilaria Bernardini and Ludovica Ramplodi) a scenario which feels akin to an atonement for the auteur’s controversial Last Tango in Paris (1972), the fatalistic bond between a man and woman suggesting love is merely a euphemism for the complex destructive cycle such sentiments often excuse. A chamber piece on the blurred lines between dichotomies, where something initially positive can quickly evolve into something toxic or negative, it’s a sometimes morose but ultimately poignant analysis of artistic endeavor as a potential salvation when our mortal shortcomings sabotage our best intentions.
Leo (Luca Marinelli) is a notable music producer currently working on an album with the noted singer Ava (Susan Sarandon), an iconic artist he has coaxed out of retirement. A previous injury has left Leo constantly contending with back pain which proves to be prohibitive in his work. Anne (Vikander), an affable doctor, initially meets Leo as a client on a home visit for his physical therapy, but romance blossoms. At the height of their relationship, Anne is forced to call the paramedics when Leo overdoses on opioids. While Anne keeps her distance following this crisis, Leo throws himself into completing Ava’s new album. But another personal tragedy strikes just when it appears Anne has decided to give him another chance.
Shot in Rome and set largely within the confines of rooms occupied by its two leads, The Echo Chamber deals specifically with many of Pallaoro’s favorite themes. Though this is not part of the thematic trilogy which includes Hannah (2017) and Monica (2022), it is similarly an exercise in the navigations of presence and absence. If Hannah dealt with absence as a present state of being as Charlotte Rampling deals with her spouse being hauled off to prison, and Monica deals with the ending of an absence as Trace Lysette reunites with her estranged mother, then The Echo Chamber feels like the prologue to absence, dealing as it does with the negating elements of pain vs. love. Pallaoro begins the narrative with Leo’s overdose, forcing us to backtrack into the development of his relationship with Anne, and a dreamlike ellipses ensues, where Anne’s caring morphs from an element of control to the ultimate loss of it.
As Sarandon’s Ava contends, ‘pain is the absence of love…the absence of meaning,’ and yet, pain is eventually what hastens the dissipation of whatever it is we call love. As the title suggests, the echo chamber, used in music to add spatial depth to a recorded track, provides an emphasis that could be used to hide, or as Ava strongly urges, actually reveals the actual intention of a vocalist. Perspectives, which also shift, determine the interpretation of savior vs. captor or intimacy vs. dependency. When does love potentially curdle into obsession, for instance? Sarandon, who channels someone like a Jeanne Moreau in Fassbinder’s Querelle (1982), is fabulously prickly as the chain-smoking Ava, herself forced to confront the echoes of her past tracks, listening to vocals she no longer has ownership of in a pertinent track called “Call My Name.” It’s reminiscent of something like Marianne Faithfull’s significant vocal shifts between recordings of “As Tears Go By,” transformed by life traumas which altered her voice irrevocably. Much like Moreau crooning for Fassbinder, Pallaoro similarly suggests that ‘each man kills the thing he loves.’
Shot by impressive cinematographer Diego Garcia, who served as DP for Gabriel Mascaro on Neon Bull (2015) and Divine Love (2021) as well as Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Cemetery of Splendor (2015), there’s a significant distinction in how Leo and Anne are presented. While the narrative jumps between periods in the couple’s relationship, Vikander is primarily lensed in sunlight, often on the verge of an exterior, navigating between places. Leo, on the other hand, tends to be deep within the interior of his more dimly lit apartment, hiding as much from us as he may be from himself. Marinelli carries the emotional brunt of the film, and it’s a mournful performance which builds to a crescendo of self-loathing. It’s difficult not to parallel his character’s trajectory with that of Bertolucci himself, bound to a wheelchair for the last fifteen years of his life following a failed herniated disc surgery.
Vikander’s expressiveness is held captive in the perspective of Leo, and it’s only in her absence where Anne seems to exert any agency—-when she’s ‘present,’ Leo’s actions and attitudes steer the relationship. But she gets to ask one of the film’s more profound questions: “What is the opposite of music?” An answer could be silence or noise, allowing for a novel opportunity of multiple interpretations. Silence suggests nothing existed, but noise can produce an echo. Or a memory. Or something beyond the self. Sarandon bridges the themes between them, a neutral avenue of exploration exemplifying a diegetic quote from the great Henry James, “Our doubt is our passion, and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art.” Essentially, the echo is the final remnant of an organic creation in the past, and like art, a message from the dead.
Reviewed on September 6th at the 2026 Venice Film Festival (83rd edition) – In Competition. 123 Minutes.
★★★½/☆☆☆☆☆
