With Love to the Person Next to Me

A brooding taxi driver becomes obsessed with the lives of his passengers in Brian McKenzie’s forgotten Melbourne gem, now lovingly restored.

Shot primarily on the grimy streets of bayside Melbourne, With Love to the Person Next to Me is an acidic and funny ode to the drifters and lonely hearts who dwell on the city’s fringes. The film stars Kym Gyngell as Wallace, a cabbie with no career prospects, no friends and a girlfriend who treats him with ambivalence. His only refuge is the cultivation of his own cider and the secret recordings he makes of his passengers (which he spends his days listening back to), but his stagnant life turns eventful when he falls in with two shady neighbours and starts a somewhat-romance with a local woman.

McKenzie’s first narrative feature generated critical and festival buzz, including winning the Locarno Prize of the Ecumenical Jury, upon its release in 1987 (when it also screened at MIFF). Following a string of documentaries about disenfranchised Australians, the film saw McKenzie apply his concerns to fiction with stirring results, while then-emerging DOP Ray Argall – to whom this restoration can be credited – lenses the city with atmospheric romanticism. Rediscover this neglected treasure of local cinema: a poignant but sensitive portrayal of Melbourne’s outsiders and of the timeless search for purpose and connection.

“Wry, moody, poignant, carefully crafted, with moments of warm humour and dark bewildering pain.” – The Age (1987)

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Director Brian McKenzie will be in attendance for the screening on Saturday 12 August.