MIFF 2023 Film Review - With Love to the Person Next to Me (Restoration)
Images courtesy of Common State.
“When you’re in school everything happens for you, when you’re out of school nothing happens for you, it happens around you.”
Written and directed by Brian McKenzie, With Love to the Person Next to Me is a dreamlike portrait of 1980s Melbourne through the eyes of a down on his luck cabbie with a passion for apple cider. Crafted on a shoestring budget of around 120,000 dollars granted by the Australian Film Commission, and shot over just three weeks, it didn’t make anything when it was initially released in 1987, but proves itself an worthy piece of indie Australian cinema with its subsequent restoration for this year’s Melbourne International Film Festival.
The film follows cab driver Wallace, who occupies a shoebox apartment in a dilapidated building by St Kilda beach, co-inhabited by neighbourhood derelicts. Our chronic eavesdropper, whose two interests boil down to making cider in his less than amicable yellow tinted room and recording the conversations of the people he drives, is unfortunately considered something of a friend to two particularly prime examples of Australian macho. Never standing up for himself, Wallace is subjected to the abuses of his clients as well as his two neighbour-cum-pals, in what could be described as an authentic portrayal of the seedier side of suburban Australian life.
With Love holds a conversational tone about it and has a go-with-the-flow feeling throughout - a comparison can be easily drawn to Robert Altman’s style of filmmaking, particularly films such as The Long Goodbye, where the focus is more so on what the characters are experiencing and how they interact over any strong overarching plot, the complexities of such are drawn out through the interactions, rather than exposition. Wallace, however, radiates no Phillip Marlowe ‘coolness’ whatsoever, like you should feel for (or perhaps even pity) him, but at the same time his eavesdropping hobby is just a touch too strange for anyone to really relate to. We never see Wallace interact with anyone as a friend, which may lead one to believe he has none (this is never helped by the bombsite state of his apartment at any given time during the film). Despite this, there is a strange sense of charm to him; maybe it is his quiet nature, or the fact that the only other two main characters we observe are basically that one stereotypical ‘true blue’ uncle in the family (you know the one). Regardless, Wallace is above all else, human, he just chooses to cope with his own life problems by obsessing over other peoples.
With Love to the Person Next to Me is not a perfect film, but it does have something that many films with larger budgets lack - a soul. With its beautiful colour schemes and quirky characters, With Love has a rough around the edges melancholic beauty that’s rarely seen in modern cinema.
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With Love to the Person Next to Me is screening as part of the Melbourne International Film Festival, running in metro cinemas August 3-20 and online August 18-27.
For more info, click here.