Hello, Bookstore film review — sugary portrait of one man and his bookshop

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This tessellated portrait of Lenox, Massachusetts bookshop owner Matt Tannenbaum presents a man suddenly faced with bankruptcy when the pandemic hits and the tourist trade vanishes. Luckily, an appealing back-story, the kindness of the community and a GoFundMe page come together to save his emporium, called simply The Bookstore.

This is a corner of New England where customers can still peruse an eclectic selection of new and used tomes, grab a drink at the embedded wine bar Get Lit and exchange banter with the garrulous owner. All those imperilled bookstores that don’t yet have documentaries made about them can only look on in envy.

Director AB Zax and the crew clearly expect viewers will be ineluctably charmed by the film’s schlubbily handsome boomer hero, who reads beautifully from some of his own favourites, including John Crowley’s Little, Big, Leonard Cohen’s Beautiful Losers and the poems of Edna St Vincent Millay, among many others. But there’s something a little twee about how thickly Zax lays on the plinkety guitar and the creamy, slanted light falling through the windows.

Tannenbaum’s self-mythologising gets grating too, especially when he compares himself to George Bailey, the small-town hero in It’s a Wonderful Life. But anyone who loves physical bookshops, with their dusty bounties and shelves full of possibility, is likely to recognise the place of love the film comes from. They may even feel an itch to go browsing before all the bookstores close down.

★★★☆☆

In cinemas and on demand from June 30