SUSAN SARANDON IN ANDREA PALLAORO’S THE ECHO CHAMBER: BERTOLUCCI’S FINAL SCREENPLAY

The last project written by Bernardo Bertolucci, alongside Ilaria Bernardini and Ludovica Rampoldi, hits the screen as The Echo Chamber, directed by Andrea Pallaoro. The cast includes Susan Sarandon, Luca Marinelli, and Alicia Vikander.

Susan Sarandon arrives at Venice 83 with The Echo Chamber, Andrea Pallaoro’s film presented in competition. But behind this title lies something that makes the project particularly compelling: at its origin is Bernardo Bertolucci’s final screenplay, written with Ilaria Bernardini and Ludovica Rampoldi.

Pallaoro takes on this legacy without trying to remake Bertolucci. The film stays focused on the characters and their relationships. Almost entirely set inside an apartment that gradually becomes part of the story itself.

Luca Marinelli plays Leo, a restless music producer. Alicia Vikander is Anne, a physical therapist bound to him by a complicated relationship. One made of closeness, distance, and dependencies hard to untangle.

Then there’s Ava, Susan Sarandon. A great singer working with Leo on what could be her final album. Her entrance shifts the story’s tone. Ava carries a life behind her, a lost love, and an awareness the other characters don’t yet possess.

This is where casting Susan Sarandon makes sense. Not just for the prestige of having one of America’s great actresses in the film. Her experience enters directly into the character. Sarandon doesn’t need to build a presence: she just has to be there. Her face, her gaze, even her silences speak long before the words do.

In Venice, she also spoke about the fallout from her stance on Palestine. After the 2023 controversy and the split with her agency, she said she was shut out of some projects. She faced a form of professional blacklisting. Still, she reaffirmed the value of free speech and cinema as a space capable of giving voice to those who are marginalized.

Pallaoro also uses space well. The apartment isn’t just a backdrop. It becomes the place where relationships tighten, burn out, and leave traces. This is cinema that prefers to observe rather than explain.

The cast works precisely because of its differences. Marinelli brings Leo’s restlessness. Vikander offers a more restrained tension. Sarandon adds a maturity that shifts the weight of each scene. Three very different actors. None needs to overpower the others.

Yet it’s hard not to linger on Susan Sarandon. Even in Venice, she keeps that presence that has made her recognizable for decades. No need to chase youth or hide from age. And that may be one of the film’s most interesting points.

Cinema truly works when it stops fearing time. A face doesn’t need to be younger to become more interesting. Sometimes the opposite is true: it’s the years, the experiences, and what remains on a face that give a character depth.

In The Echo Chamber, Sarandon brings exactly that. Pallaoro takes Bernardo Bertolucci’s final screenplay and entrusts it to three performers. Each, in their own way, shows how hard it is to live with others—and to let them go.

Maybe the title starts right here. With those people who, even after leaving our lives, somehow keep echoing inside us.