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🇮🇹 Italy /Culture & Society

Venice, Andrea Pallaoro: ‘The Echo Chamber’ is my tribute to Bertolucci

From ANSA · () Italian

Translated from Italian and summarized by DistantNews. Read the original for the full story.

At a glance

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  • Andrea Pallaoro’s “The Echo Chamber” is competing for Italy at the Venice Film Festival and is based on Bernardo Bertolucci’s final screenplay, written with Ilaria Bernardini and Ludovica Rampoldi.
  • The film follows a troubled music producer, a physiotherapist and an aging singer whose lives intersect in a London apartment.
  • Pallaoro, Susan Sarandon, Alicia Vikander and Luca Marinelli discussed the film’s themes, setting and creative process.

Andrea Pallaoro arrives in competition at the Venice Film Festival with “The Echo Chamber,” a film drawn from Bernardo Bertolucci’s final screenplay, written with Ilaria Bernardini and Ludovica Rampoldi. For Pallaoro, taking on Bertolucci’s material is both a responsibility and a personal artistic connection.

The film unfolds largely inside a London apartment, in the tradition of Bertolucci’s intimate cinema. Luca Marinelli plays Leo, a restless, cocaine-dependent music producer and frustrated artist. Alicia Vikander plays Anne, the young physiotherapist who treats his back and, through her love, his anguish. Susan Sarandon plays Ava, a major singing star who visits the apartment while preparing an unexpected final album.

Inheriting a screenplay by Bernardo Bertolucci is certainly a great responsibility, even though his themes are very close to my vision of the individual, the couple and the nuances of love.

· Andrea PallaoroThe director described adapting Bertolucci’s final screenplay.

The apartment is more than a backdrop for Vikander. She described it as a character in the film, a place shaped by memory and control. Everyday objects, including a cup, a pillow and a toothbrush, become part of an “architecture of desire, need and control.” The music by composer Clément Ducol serves as a link between the characters.

I don’t sing, I felt incredibly vulnerable.

· Alicia VikanderVikander discussed performing music in the film for the first time.

Sarandon said Ava enters an unfamiliar world after losing her partner. She highlighted the character’s refusal to undress in front of anyone else, fearing that another person would see only an old woman. Vikander said she drew on her own experiences and love stories to make Anne credible. She also acknowledged feeling vulnerable while singing for the first time: “I don’t sing, I felt incredibly vulnerable.”

Marinelli recalled being so absorbed while watching Sarandon and Vikander work that he missed a line. Quoting Eduardo De Filippo, he said, “I missed the line because I was listening to her.” Sarandon also used the festival appearance to discuss her public support for the Palestinian cause, the professional boycott she says she has faced, and her belief that films can challenge audiences. The film will be distributed in Italy by 01 Distribution from Sept. 10.

I missed the line because I was listening to her.

· Luca MarinelliMarinelli recalled being absorbed by his co-stars’ creative process.
About this summary

Originally published by ANSA in Italian. Translated, summarized, and contextualized automatically by DistantNews, with a note on how the source frames the story. Not individually reviewed before publishing. How this works.

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