Near the end of The Echo Chamber, in competition at this year’s Venice Film Festival, Alicia Vikander asks Luca Marinelli, “Do you want me to leave?”
Ironically, if the audience had been asked if they wanted an early exit, they might well have taken it. For a film about a man struggling with an addiction to painkillers, it would have been nice to have something to help numb the pain of this painfully slow and tedious chamber piece.
The film begins with Anne (Vikander) finding her partner Leo (Marinelli) unconscious due to an overdose of opioid painkillers. From there, it follows two converging timelines: one leading up to, and one extending onward from that fateful moment.
One shows Leo returning home and to his work as a music producer after 87 days in a drug rehabilitation clinic, while Anna sneaks into his apartment and spends time there while he is out. The other shows how they met and their blossoming relationship that began when Anna provided physical therapy for Leo’s back pain.
In both timelines, it is an incredibly questionable and problematic relationship. A relationship built upon poor judgment, decisions, and emotional manipulation on both sides. Vikander’s Anne must be one of the worst nurses in the NHS, and the world, for that matter. Due to how quickly she seems to abandon any sense of ethics to provide and prescribe pain medication to her patient-turned-partner. An act that quickly sets him down that slippery slope of addiction. One that Marinelli delivers convincingly.
The only source of light in the perpetual gloom of this apartment is Susan Sarandon’s Ava. An ageing singer who Leo has convinced to return to the recording studio for a final shot. There is a twinkle in her eye that gives hope to Leo, and for a moment the audience too, that things may improve… but sadly the focus keeps returning to Anne’s unclear motives and emotions that fuel her unexplained actions.
The film was adapted from Bernardo Bertolucci’s final unmade screenplay. He famously made another film about a questionable relationship explored within the confines of an apartment. At least that one had a true sense of danger and eroticism. The results from this script are just tiring to watch. Not helped by flat direction and a duo with zero chemistry.
It is rare to hear a festival of critics gleefully cheer and applaud a character’s apparent demise. Perhaps because they believed that would bring the film to an end. No such luck, however, for the character or the audience.
This is one competition entry that, unlike the titular echo, one will hopefully never hear from again.
The Echo Chamber had its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival
Rating: 
Director: Andrea Pallaoro
Stars: Luca Marinelli, Alicia Vikander, Susan Sarandon
Runtime: 123 minutes
Country: Italy/Belgium
