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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Studio One Forever review – affectionate look back at LA’s legendary gay club

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Frequented by those looking for a refuge from homophobia, this documentary charts the history of the venue and the effort to save its cultural legacy

‘It used to be paradise. Now it’s a straight club.” The dismay is obvious when a bunch of former regulars at Studio One, the legendary West Hollywood gay club, take a tour of the venue in 2019. From 1974 until 1993, 9pm to 2am, seven nights a week, men packed the dancefloor of Studio One. “It was the happiest place on Earth,” remembers one. Looking at the photographs you can almost smell the sweat. One ex employee says that so many guys were taking poppers you could get a head-rush high simply by breathing in on the dance floor.

The story of Studio One is told in this affectionate, nostalgic documentary. Film-maker Marc Saltarelli interviews men who were there and follows a campaign in 2019 to save the Studio One building – a former factory – from demolition. When it opened in 1974, homophobia was rife outside. Studio One was a place where you could go to feel safe and loved. Though really, that only applied to white men; the racist door policy at Studio One was so well known the LA Times ran a front-page story about it.

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