The luminous Susan Sarandon has arrived at the Venice Film Festival with The Echo Chamber , an Italian film directed by Andrea Pallaoro based on the last script by Bernardo Bertolucci, who died in 2018 without having reviewed the second draft. Alicia Vikander and Luca Marinelli are the lead couple in this story of love and anguish in which a music producer with a penthouse in London – the alter ego of the young Bertolucci – and with back pains – those of the older Bertolucci – has a physiotherapist brought in while preparing an album with a veteran singer.
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This role of Sarandon, who also has to sing, is perhaps her biggest presence at the Venice Film Festival in recent years. And it coincides with the disappearance of Hollywood roles due to her stance and public support for Palestine.
“Those deeply rooted positions within my industry by Zionist people who have not changed their attitude towards me persist. Recently, films have been withdrawn from me because there are still agencies telling others not to hire me,” the New York actress explained this Sunday at the Lido. “But that is the power structure. Then there are the people, for whom the narrative has completely changed regarding the historical relevance of Palestine and the links between Zionism and the United States within our politics.”
“For many people, it has been an important revelation – she continues – to discover to what extent the United States funds Israel. No one really understood the magnitude of that. And now we have also voted to integrate the army with the Israeli army, so there are many things people are now aware of. There is another understanding of the situation.”
‘The Echo Chamber’ is the script the director of ‘Novecento’ was working on before dying in 2018
Among the people, and especially internationally, Sarandon says she feels welcomed. “If we talk about a major studio, I think there is – and not only with me, but also with other people – the idea that it is impossible to work with us on certain projects. And that is why I thank Andrea, because he did not listen to those warnings,” she assures.
As for playing a singer, she found it interesting. “I struggled because I actually don’t sing and I feel very vulnerable when I try to sing, but I suppose that worked for the character, because Ava was also going through difficulties,” adds the star of Thelma & Louise and Dead Man Walking .
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For Vikander, the central theme of the film, which was shot entirely in an apartment, is this echo chamber. “It is the music that reverberates, but it is also those events, memories, and habits from which these people cannot escape. It is a slow-burning drama that has a kind of mystery. As if the things you hear these characters tell were clues about what is on the other side of those walls or where they come from.”
Bertolucci’s idea, who began working in 2017 with screenwriter Ludovica Rampoldi, was the story of a man and a woman who live in the same apartment but never cross paths, never get to know each other, and perhaps don’t even know of each other’s existence. “From there we kept working for months, taking different paths, until in October 2018 we reached a second draft, which we sent to be translated, but in November the legendary filmmaker passed away. “The news of his death arrived at the same time as the translator’s email,” confirms co-writer Ilaria Bernardini. For years the proposal for Indigo Films was on hold until Pallaoro appeared and made a “very personal” film.
“I recently rewatched Bertolucci’s ‘The Conformist’; I took my son who is a filmmaker, and it’s so modern…”
Sarandon never got to work with Bertolucci but met him through Louis Malle. “When I saw The Conformist [1970], I didn’t know that cinema could do that. It was a radically different way of telling the story. There are certain scenes I still remember, although probably at that time I barely had a political idea of what was happening.”
When the actress met him, he was no longer the filmmaker who had made The Conformist, based on Alberto Moravia’s book in which a well-off man in 1930s Italy joins fascism to fit into society. “I recently watched it again. I took my son, who is a filmmaker, to see it, and it’s so modern…,” concludes Sarandon.
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