Format: DVD from NetFlix on laptop.
I wasn’t 20 minutes in with The Prince of Tides when I realized it was going to be one of “those” movies. The Prince of Tides would, by most standards, be called a “women’s” movie. It’s about relationships and feelings and things coming out in psychotherapy. It involves emotional breakdowns and family trauma and attempted suicide. In the cinematic world. this is the purview of women; men aren’t supposed to like this stuff. I sometimes do and sometimes don’t—I hated Terms of Endearment despite being able to recognize that it’s a well-made film. Then again, I’m a huge defender of Ordinary People, a film that involves psychotherapy, family trauma, emotional breakdowns, and attempted suicide. But I knew while we were still establishing characters and relationships that this was going to be something that, with a lesser cast and budget, would be on Lifetime.
Tom Wingo (Nick Nolte) is an ex-English teacher and ex-football coach living in a fairly palatial house in a beach community in South Carolina. He has a strained relationship with his wife Sally (Blythe Danner) but a very good one with his three daughters. His mother (Kate Nelligan), with whom his relationship is terribly strained, shows up one afternoon to tell him that his twin sister Savannah (Melinda Dillon), a poet and author, has attempted suicide again. It’s up to Tom to make the trip from Charleston to New York to see what can be done.
