“Dark and moody, yet also sensual and warm.”

“We work in the dark; we do what we can; we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion, and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art.” – The Middle Years, Henry James

At first, there is the house. At times a sanctuary of creation, at others a tomb of depression. Pain and joy lie next to each other in its bed, often overlapping. The push and pull of love is a cyclical process in this place, the push and pull between Leo (Luca Marinelli), a music producer for whom his home doubles as his workplace, and Anne (Alicia Vikander), a physician who treats both Leo’s physical as well as his mental pains. Leo is a recovering addict suffering from excruciating back pain, that he can only channel into self-destruction. Until he meets her, that is. Her massages don’t help, her injections only temporarily. Her presence, however, is soothing, and so are the pills she prescribes. Anne is around, maybe always, maybe fleetingly. They dance around each other through the rooms of the house, the house with its warmth that envelops them when they find each other in its spaces. Anne takes care of Leo, Anne controls Leo, Anne provides for Leo. But he takes too much from her, and especially her pills. Old habits raise their heads like a vicious viper.

It starts to affect Leo’s work with Ava (Susan Sarandon), a vocal diva from a past era that he has managed to lure out of hiding for one final album. She knows his pain, which the tortured artist must find a way to express. It manifests as back spasms for Leo, but the pain comes from within. His addiction is an exponent of it, not a cause. He uses Ava like he uses Anne, but both women in turn use him, out of desire, love, the need for control. He pushes them away, attracts them again, only for the cycle to begin all over. Somehow, it all falls into place, but then fate forces Leo to relinquish all control.

Based on a screenplay drafted by Italian legend Bernardo Bertolucci before his death, Andrea Pallaoro’s latest film The Echo Chamber is his most somber, his darkest even. At its heart is a love story, but it is a love that hangs between desire and dependency, where care can just as easily slip into control. The way the characters meet is organic: she is a caretaker who comes to treat his pains. The way their relationship develops is anything but traditional, as is the timeline in the film. Nothing is linear, and time and space seem to flow into each other through the careful process of editor Paola Freddi. That makes the film dense and at times hard to follow, the ambiguity of who, when and where being both a boon to the film’s atmosphere and a hindrance to understanding it. Luckily Pallaoro lets it unfold to his languid rhythm, at times evoking an almost dreamlike state. Leo’s London apartment (although actually filmed in Rome) is the film’s sole location, unless you count the street view outside his apartment window where Leo’s classic Jaguar is parked. The apartment becomes a character of its own, with its many interesting artefacts to look at (Anne’s words), and its lush reds and greens, and its deep browns, shot beautifully by DoP Diego Garcia. They give the image a sensuality that is slowly becoming one of Pallaoro’s trademarks. If the space was to be described as a song, it would be The Stranglers’ ‘Golden Brown’ at 33rpm, unmistakably a song about addiction. Small wonder that, besides a number of original pieces composed by Clément Ducol, the soundtrack contains songs by Nina Simone and Marianne Faithfull, of whom Sarandon’s Ava contains more than a few traces. Both women are artists, addicts, and sufferers of pain.

The film’s slow-burn pace and lack of narrative thrust will no doubt push rather than pull certain audiences. The Echo Chamber requires patience, reflection (not easy in a festival setting, unfortunately), and a willingness to let oneself submerge in its dark pool of sensuality and agony. If one can’t, there are at least the performances of Marinelli, excellent as the tortured artist suffocated by self-pity and a lust for love, and Vikander, at once genuine in her love and refined in her manipulation. It will be interesting to see how people read her character, because her Anne is perhaps the more complex of the two, and certainly the most enigmatic. As a mediator of sorts, Sarandon is The Echo Chamber‘s ‘wise guru’, a woman who has seen it all and cuts through Leo’s bullshit like a warm knife through butter. She has her own insecurities that she hides well, but in Sarandon’s seasoned hands she emanates warmth without becoming motherly.

The Echo Chamber is Pallaoro’s darkest work, certainly in its final stretch when the scales of Leo and Anne’s relationship have, by fate, tipped in favor of the latter. Where his previous film Monica, also in Competition in Venice four years ago, had a certain sense of hope and a light touch, The Echo Chamber is dark and moody, yet also sensual and warm. It’s a complex work that in truth requires repeat viewing to fully appreciate its nuances (and maybe decipher its timeline), and provides Marinelli and Vikander the opportunity to turn in two of the finest performances of their careers.