Allo la France review – romance of French phone booths exposes funding cuts to rural services

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In an endearingly whimsical road trip documentary, Floriane Devigne takes calls from her interview subjects in the last remaining phone boxes dotted across rural France The humble telephone box, a souvenir from the days of analogue, can also be an intriguing cinematic locus. Floriane Devigne’s road trip documentary begins with such a relic: the last public phone booth in Paris, which also appears in Jacques Rivette’s mesmerising 1981 film Le Pont du Nord. Unlike their Instagrammable British counterparts, French phone boxes are usually painted in a demure grey and blend seamlessly with their surroundings. As it moves from the capital city to more remote areas, Devigne’s film observes the vanishing of a formerly essential utility as her cross-country odyssey sparkles with an endearing whimsicality. Instead of using talking heads, Devigne ducks into various phone boxes scattered across France, as she takes calls from her interview subjects. Stories of love and longing fill these unassum...
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It’s a vintage year for the Oscars. But what was the strongest year in cinema history?

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The current crop might be the best Academy Awards list in years, but which was the best ever year for films? Guardian writers present their case for the winner of winners

In three weeks’ time, the credits will roll on the best cinema season in recent memory. Ten films are up for the best picture Oscar on 10 March and not a dud among them. That is unusual. Usually you will find an Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close in there somewhere. Or maybe more than one (Babel, The Blind Side), or even a trio (Crash, Les Miserables, Bohemian Rhapsody). Often, it’s hard to get jazzed by the awards race; sometimes it’s tricky to feel strongly about any of the big contenders.

This year is different. Not only is the quality elevated; audience engagement has been sky-high. Much of that is down to the Barbenheimer juggernaut, giving brainy blockbusters their post-Covid event movie moment. But the watercooler would have been noisy nonetheless: The Zone of Interest, Anatomy of a Fall and Poor Things are all strikingly ambitious and singular works of art that have fuelled robust debate.

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