For some values of "loves"

Up next on TCM is a day of movies dedicated to Shirley MacLaine. One that I hadn't heard of before the last time it showed up on TCM is Two Loves; it gets a showing tomorrow, August 13, at 8:15 AM. And now, having watched it, I can see why I hadn't heard of it before.

After the credits, some titles inform us that the setting is North Island, New Zealand, although I wonder how much northern California stood in when they have establishing shots and how much is the MGM back lot. A car shows up at a severely underfunded school, and getting out of the car is one of the teachers, Anna Vorontosov (Shirley MacLaine). She's an American who wound up teaching here presumably to get away from America, and perhaps to do good work, since she's teaching a class of mostly Maori children. Anna has unorthodox ideas about teaching, but fairly orthodox ideas about life, which might be part of why she ended up in New Zealand, as she never found anyone to marry.

As she makes it to school today, she's informed that there's a new chief inspector of school who will be visiting, William Abercrombie (Jack Hawkins). But before that, we meet another of the teachers who's come here from far away to teach: Paul Lathrope (Laurence Harvey). Now, as you might guess from a title like Two Loves, Paul is likely to be interested romantically in Anna. But there are a couple of catches, like his having served in the war and that scarring him emotionally. It's also led him to drink and take all sorts of inappropriate risks on his motorcycle. Anna also doesn't want to go too far too fast with him.

Eventually, Abercrombie also gets to know Anna better. Abercrombie is originally from the UK but came over to New Zealand. His wife and kids, however, didn't like New Zealand, so they went back to the UK although the wife will never grant him a divorce. Abercrombie reads a book that Anna has put together of stories from the Maori kids that talk about social issues "proper" white kids would never discuss and, while Abercrombie is shocked about it at first, he thinks their stories have potential.

One more subplot involves an adolescent Maori student, Whareparita (Nobu McCarthy), and the way she fits into the life of the school with the teachers. She's asked to be an assistant with Anna as it's thought this will make Anna's clasroom look better in the eyes of Abercrombie. But it's really Lathrope who is of more importance to Whareparita's subplot.

I mentioned at the top that I hadn't heard of Two Loves and that this was for good reason. The reason is that the movie got savage reviews at the time of its release. It's based on a book, and apparently the author of that book said the movie deserved the bad reviews and that the direction mangled her story. The story lines here are very muddled and it feels hard to have much interest in any of the characters: the Maori are almost cartoonish; Lathrope is, at least as played by Laurence Harvey, over the top; and Anna isn't really given much depth.

But, as always, judge for yourself when you watch Two Loves.