I'm sure that many people like myself saw The Prince of Tides and asked themselves, is there nothing that Barbra Streisand can't do in the entertainment field? Which then begs the second question of why the Motion Picture Academy didn't consider her for a Best Actress Award or Best Director considering all the other nominations The Prince of Tides received.
This film may be Nick Nolte's career role. He plays a man from South Carolina, an English teacher and football coach who is the brother of a famous author, Melinda Dillon who has made numerous attempts to kill herself. She's living in New York and seeing the latest in a long line of psychiatrists who in this case is Barbra Streisand. But Streisand is going to try something new. She asks that Nolte come to New York and tell some of the family secrets in a hope that a breakthrough can be achieved. Nolte comes to New York and gets some healing of his own in the process.
The two of them do have an affair and it's interesting that both are married, but the liaison seems quite natural and normal, in fact the whole film builds up to it. The high point of the film is Nolte telling of the traumatic event that scarred all their lives to Streisand. He's telling someone he regards as a friend not a medical professional.
Director Streisand got fabulous performances out of Actress Streisand and the rest of a well cast feature film. Nolte lost the Best Actor Award to Anthony Hopkins for Silence of the Lambs and the film itself lost Best Picture to Silence of the Lambs. Kate Nelligan who played Nolte's mother lost for Best Supporting Actress to Mercedes Ruehl in The Fisher King. The Prince of Tides got nominated in five other categories, but did not win in any of them. And most egregiously, no nomination for Barbra Streisand for acting or directing.
Barbra even got to direct her son Jason Gould who plays her son. Most of his scenes are with Nolte however. Jason has talent genes from both sides of the pool, but the nose is definitely mom's.
The Prince of Tides is a great story about love and healing and is a Nineties classic. Hopefully Barbra can be coaxed to at least direct again because she hasn't won an Oscar in that category.
The Prince of Tides
1991
Action / Drama / Romance
The Prince of Tides
1991
Action / Drama / Romance
70% - Critics
70% - Audience
6.8Keywords: woman directorextramarital affairdysfunctional familypsychiatristamerican football
Plot summary
The Wingo family is from South Carolina, they growing up in a house on a tidal plain. The oldest offspring, Lucas, largely acted as the protector for his younger twins siblings, Tom and Savannah, in light of their dysfunctional growing up, with their shrimper father, Henry, distant and abusive if/when he did pay them any attention, and their mother, Lila, while not doting on them most concerned about appearances and striving for social standing. Now in middle age, Savannah is a New York based poet, Tom, still living on the South Carolina coast outside of Charleston with his wife Sally and their own three doting daughters, taking a break from his high school teaching/football coaching job, while Lucas has long since died while still standing up for himself and his beliefs. Lila, divorced and now remarried with that wealth and social standing she so long desired, receives news that Savannah is in the hospital following her most recent suicide attempt. Not wanting to face the blame directly as she suspects, she assigns Tom to go to New York to speak to Savannah's therapist, Susan Loewenstein, to provide any information of a family history nature that could help in Savannah's recovery. Tom agrees despite hating New York, and it being not a good time since he and Sally are experiencing marital problems, they both just knowing that things between them are not working, and not having been intimate in months. As Tom and Loewenstein (as he calls her) begin their sessions, Tom is slow to divulge the Wingo family problems to her. But he learns that she too is having her own family problems, with her concert violinist husband Herbert Woodruff being self absorbed and condescending, with their young adult son, Bernard, hating both largely because of they predestining his life also as a concert violinist. Tom and Loewenstein's sessions blossom into a friendship and romance, where their talks, in addition to helping Savannah, may help them both in dealing with their own life problems, Tom's which have been long buried figuratively and literally.
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Love And Healing
sincere Nick Nolte
Tom Wingo (Nick Nolte)'s marriage to Sally (Blythe Danner) is in trouble despite outward appearances. They have 3 daughters. His brother Luke is dead. His poet twin sister Savannah in NYC has attempted suicide once again and is under the care of therapist Susan Lowenstein (Barbara Streisand). He agrees to go see Lowenstein to help Savannah. She hires him to coach football to her angry son Bernard. Her husband Herbert (Jeroen Krabbé) is a philandering concert violinist. Tom's problem stems from his dysfunctional family with his abusive shrimper father Henry, mother Lila (Kate Nelligan),twin Savannah, older brother Luke and one terrible incident.
Nick Nolte is a powerful presence and Barbra Streisand is well-matched. I wouldn't call her directing great. It's solid. This is mostly about the acting. Krabbé is terrific in the dinner party. Jason Gould is limited. It's another instance where nepotism takes away from the cinematic experience. Kate Nelligan is a great actress but I can really sense her southern acting in this one. It's an effective romance melodrama and Nolte gives it his all.
A Gut Wrenching Movie
Nick Nolte and his sister are damaged goods, but they don't know why. When the sister goes into therapy, Nolte's Tom Wingo meets the therapist played by Barbra Streisand. She is in an loveless relationship with an arrogant concert violinist husband. Wingo gets a second lease on life when he helps with the development of Streisand's son, teaching him "boy" things. The thing that keeps this going, however, is the secret that lies in the subconsciouses of the siblings. This succeeds because it is not clichéd with a pat kind of conclusion. The world is not simple and the issues here are not simple, and the solutions don't come cheaply.