Allo la France

1,941. That's how many photos of phone boxes Floriane Devigne has collected over the course of the eight years she worked on this film. The rarer they become, the harder she searches... She constructs her film like a collection, gathering, sorting and sharing her most memorable encounters and stories. She invites us along for the ride in this funny, political and inspired road movie through France’s dead zones, as she mischievously pursues her obsession. As well as collecting photographs, Floriane also records the phone conversations she receives in the last phone boxes that remain standing, in remote areas where the 4G network has yet to penetrate. The opening scene of Allo la France sees the filmmaker taking a boat in order to reach the last phone box in Paris, which has been abandoned on a quay - presumably because it would be more complicated to remove it than to leave it there. This phone box imposes itself as a symbol of what is left of public utilities. From an accounting perspective, have the public utilities that are left in our ever-changing societies survived simply because it would be more expensive to remove them than to leave them where they are?

Madeline Robert