YOUR PLACE OR MINE (2023) starts with a 2003 hookup between Ashton Kutcher and Reese Witherspoon, then jumps to the present when they’re Dioscuri on opposite coasts who wind up switching home for a month and — well, I’ve no idea what came next because this didn’t interest me enough to keep watching. Partly it’s that Kutcher isn’t that interesting, partly just that nothing seemed funny or engaging enough to justify taking the time. “You’re going to tell other people a story about yourself that’s better than the story you tell yourself about yourself.”
I watched THE RAINS CAME (1939) because Mara Alexander, who plays a supporting part, is the mom of a friend of mine, retired actor Hope Alexander. The movie, based on a popular novel, is set in India as the monsoon season approaches, then hits (““In Europe when people say ‘it looks like rain’ it’s merely polite conversation.”), leading to danger, tragedy, romance, and death for George Brent (dissolute British aristocrat), Maria Ouspenskaya (in brownface as a local rahnee), Nigel Bruce (stuffy millionaire), Brenda Joyce (rebellious girl falling for Brent), Myrna Loy (Bruce’s ne’er do well promiscuous wife) and Tyrone Power in brownface as a noble Indian doctor who inspires Loy with a passion purer than she’s ever known before. Alas, like Anne Bonney and Valerie, the Bad Girl pays with her life for being bad, and aside from that the blithe embrace of British imperialism (we’re meant to sympathize with Brent’s nostalgia for Queen Victoria), typical for that era, does not age well, nor does the brownface casting. “We’ve double-crossed everyone else in the world, Tom — let’s not start with each other.”
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