Pallaoro's 'Echo Chamber' Gets 8-Minute Venice Standing Ovation — SkimNews
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- Andrea Pallaoro directed 'The Echo Chamber,' which earned an eight-minute standing ovation at its Sunday evening world premiere at the Venice Film Festival, where it is competing for the Golden Lion.
- Bernardo Bertolucci was fine-tuning the screenplay before his death in Rome in 2018, making the film his final script; Pallaoro reworked it with Bertolucci's original co-writers Ilaria Bernardini and Ludovica Rampoldi.
- Luca Marinelli stars as a music producer with a history of drug addiction, opposite Alicia Vikander as a seemingly gentle-hearted physiotherapist and Susan Sarandon as a storied singing star who hires him for her comeback album.
- Nicola Giuliano of Rome-based Indigo Film acquired the rights to the screenplay and attached Pallaoro to direct — marking the first feature Pallaoro did not write himself after Medeas, Hannah and Monica.
- Susan Sarandon thanked Pallaoro at the press conference for having 'the courage' to cast her, saying Hollywood roles have dried up due to her pro-Palestinian stance and that agencies have told people not to hire her.
- Vikander and Sarandon shared a long hug as the lights came up after the screening, capping the film's warm reception.
Why it matters: A Bertolucci-penned screenplay reaching the screen via Pallaoro — a Venice regular whose previous three features he wrote himself — gives this Golden Lion entry unusual literary provenance. Sarandon's press conference remarks put a dollar-and-cents edge on the casting: she says agencies are still steering work away from her, making the production's choice a public act of defiance in a year when her industry standing is visibly diminished.
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