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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Yodha review – bone-crunching patriotism on display in adrenaline-fuelled thriller

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Sidharth Malhotra fights like a machine in an Indian action film cut from similar cloth as the jingoistic Rambo series

Depending on your age and perspective, you may or may not have fond memories of the three Rambo films. Where the first one was rather circumspect about America’s role in Vietnam, the sequels went all in on a might-is-right jingoism that combined adrenaline-infused action, rippling muscles and improbable set pieces with deeply queasy politics. New Hindi action-movie Yodha is cut from similar cloth.

We’re introduced to our hero, Arun (Sidharth Malhotra) as a young boy who worships his soldier father, who is then promptly killed leaving some big Freudian boots to fill. Arun vows he will either live to be worthy of wearing the uniform of his dad’s badass task force, the “Yodha” of the title, or else his “corpse will be wrapped in our flag”. Many bone-crunching displays of patriotism follow over the subsequent two hours. These are facilitated by Arun’s ability to fight like an absolute machine, and also practically teleport himself, popping up wherever the bad guys don’t want him to be.

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