‘It doesn’t need regeneration’: Peckham’s charm under threat from gentrification plans

Director Raine Allen-Miller, on the set of Rye Lane, wanted the film to showcase the London borough in a different way. Photograph: Chris Harris

There’s a scene in Rye Lane, a film said to be breathing new life into romcoms, where the two main characters stroll past a body-popping white-haired man in a spangly Yves Klein blue cowboy outfit, then continue their conversation sitting in giant high heels outside a shoe shop.

The moonwalking cowboy is an actor, but the shoe shop is real – one of dozens of outlets inside Rye Lane market giving Peckham the personality that inspired the film’s director, Raine Allen-Miller, to treat the south London neighbourhood as a character rather than mere scenery.