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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Waterloo Sunset review – inside an oasis of affordable living

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This highly watchable documentary spends time with the residents of an almshouse in central London – cheerfully dispelling misconceptions about ageing

Tourists drifting out of London’s Tate Modern sometimes find themselves peering through the gates of nearby Hopton’s Almshouses, a collection of 20 pretty cottages built around a grass courtyard which looks like a village green. If anyone asks what the place is, one cheeky resident tells them in a low whisper that it’s an institution for the criminally insane. Actually, Hopton’s is a little oasis of affordable housing for low-income over-65s, built in the mid 1700s by a philanthropist fishmonger for “the poor and decaying men of the parish”. Like many other elite men-only spaces it was slow to adapt to change, only admitting women in 2012.

It’s like winning the lottery, getting a flat here, says one resident, a former taxi driver. He lost everything after a divorce in middle age; moving to Hopton’s changed his life. This very watchable documentary introduces a handful of other residents too. Jenny, 92, cheerfully talks about a recent fall on a bus which left her with a sore back. Did she go to hospital, director Harvey Marcus asks from behind the camera? Jenny looks appalled. “No! I could get up and walk. Why make a fuss?”

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