Dear Phone is an early experimental film from avant-garde film-maker Peter Greenaway. I guess it serves two purposes for the director. Firstly, it is a celebration of the red British phone box and the way it almost looks like an alien artifact the way it appears all over the landscape, in utterly contrasting locations. Secondly, it is a way of Greenaway making fun of narrative film - he has gone on record complaining that the vast majority of cinema is merely illustrated text, so here he literally films text as a way of mocking this tradition and he does so, of course, as part of a highly non-narrative film. Anyway, we see many shots of phone boxes from various locations, while accompanied by their ringing or engaged tones. In between this we hear a selection of phone-related stories, which are accompanied by their associated text, which is quite ineligible mostly and written on various types of paper.
I actually liked looking at the shots of the phone boxes a lot more than I did listening to the stories, which were typically undramatic and pointless for the most part. But the shots of the phones I liked. It hardly needs saying that this is pretty far from being a film for everyone but it does indicate again the oddness of Greenaway's approach to film-making. That's not a necessarily full blown recommendation but at the very least he consistently offers something different to the norm.
I actually liked looking at the shots of the phone boxes a lot more than I did listening to the stories, which were typically undramatic and pointless for the most part. But the shots of the phones I liked. It hardly needs saying that this is pretty far from being a film for everyone but it does indicate again the oddness of Greenaway's approach to film-making. That's not a necessarily full blown recommendation but at the very least he consistently offers something different to the norm.