South Carolina. Tom is a teacher and football coach married to Sallie with whom he has three children. However, he has a dark family past, and it catches up with him when his sister Savannah tries to again commit suicide. Their late brother Luke already killed himself a long time ago. Tom thus accepts to travel to New York to talk with Savannah's psychiatrist Susan Lowenstein who tries to figure out what is the cause of this behavior. Tom hears Sallie had an affair in the meantime. He also falls in love with Susan and accepts to coach her teenage son Bernard. Finally, at a seance, Tom reveals his secret to Susan: as a 10-year old, he witnessed how three escaped convicts entered their home and raped him, his mother and Savannah, but his brother Luke took a gun and shot them. They disposed of the bodies and never told his dad. Reluctantly, Tom leaves Susan and returns back to his home in South Caorlina.
Arguably the best film directed by Barbra Streisand, "The Prince of Tides" is a gentle depiction of people struggling with trauma from the past and the efforts of psychiatrists to try to heal them. In adapting Pat Controy's novel, Streisand was criticized for removing large chunks of flashbacks from Tom's childhood, thereby reorienting the story to focus more on her character's Susan Lowenstein's romance with Tom and thus making the story about something else, yet she sufficiently managed to make it work either way. The movie is very well directed, concise and emotional, relaying on strong dialogues. While narrating about his childhood in the opening act, Tom says: "I suppose Henry Wingo would have been a pretty good father, if he hadn't been such a violent man." In another moment, during a psychiatric seance, Tom recounts an episode when his mother called him to her room, hugged him and told him he is her favorite child and that he is the only one in the family who will amount to something, only to later add: "She told this separately to all three of us". In another moment, the 'tough' Tom and Susan have this exchange: "I cry at weddings, at the Olympics. I'm real big at the national anthem." - "But not over Luke?" - "What the hell for? It wouldn't bring him back." - "No. But it might bring you back." Nick Nolte delivered an excellent performance as the tormented Tom, since the script allowed him to parade his acting abilities, though the romance segment is a bit weaker since there is no true chemistry between him and Streisand—they are simply not that good of a match as a couple. One great little comical moment has him take Herbert's violin and threaten to throw it down the balcony if Herbert doesn't apologize to Susan, and when Herbert protests, Tom throws the violin up in the air and catches it back in his arm, causing Herbert to apologize. The plot twist at the end which finally reveals Tom's dark secret is effective and shocking, but the movie suffers a bit since it feels like everything else after it feels like an anticlimax, an underwhelming 25-minute epilogue which lost its interest after the trauma was revealed. Still, "The Prince of Tides" is a truly well made film that will satisfy the viewers.
Grade:+++
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