The Prince of Tides: Movie Summary

The movie "The Prince of Tides" takes place in South Carolina and is centered around what at first appears to be a typical Southern family. As the story opens up, one realizes that the father is somewhat violent towards his wife and children and the mother comes across as over dramatic. The three siblings, Savannah and Tom who are twins, and Jake, the oldest brother, are all very close due to the turbulence in the family. At the beginning of the movie, a grown up Tom receives a phone call from his mother stating that Savannah had tried to kill herself again and that Savannah's therapist wants a family member to come to New York. Tom's mother decides that she is too busy to go and sends Tom instead. When they get into a fight about it, you find out that Tom is unemployed and that his brother Luke had died two years previous.

Tom arrives in New York and meets up with Dr. Susan Loenstein, Savannah's therapist. Susan tells Tom that she asked a family member to come because Savannah had been in a coma and is now having trouble remembering parts of her childhood. She wants Tom to be Savannah's memory to help bring her back to sanity. During their initial meeting, Tom makes the statement that his family lives by the rule of "When things get too painful, we laugh". This seems to be a running theme throughout the entire movie.

Susan starts having Tom come to sessions, although not for himself, but to relive Savannah's childhood so that she can get to the bottom of the issues that Savannah cannot remember. Tom tells Susan that most of the problems in the family stem from his mother. He remembers their mother burning Savannah's journals as a child because she could not stand the thought of her daughter being disloyal to the family, even through writing. Tom knew that something was off kilter with Savannah around the age of 7 or 8 when their mother had a stillborn baby and told the kids that the baby had died because they were all so bad. Tom walked in the night the baby died and saw Savannah holding the dead baby in the rocking chair and whispering, "You're the lucky one because you don't have to live with us". When Tom confronted her the next morning, she had no recollection of it and said that, "Who would do a crazy thing like that?".

While in New York, Tom's wife, Sally, calls and tells him that she doesn't want him to come home that weekend. They are having some marital issues, and admits that she is having an affair with another man. This upsets Tom, but not as deeply as it should. In the meantime, he continues having sessions with Susan, which are turning into his own venting sessions rather than just reliving Savannah's childhood. He starts remembering things he hadn't thought of since he was a kid, and his emotions are finally coming to the surface. The man who spent his life hiding his feelings and never talking was now doing nothing but. He occasionally makes comments to Susan about how pretty she is or how smart she is, and you can tell that he is developing some sort of feelings for her.

As the sessions continue with Susan, Tom finally divulges the family secret. When he and Savannah were 13, three men who escaped from prison broke into their home. He said that two of the men raped their mother and Savannah. At first he said he couldn't remember what he was doing at the time, but that he couldn't get help. After a few minutes of Susan probing deeper, Tom confesses that the third man raped him. Luke walked in on all of this and shot two of the men while their mother stabbed the third one in the back. Tom feels guilty because his mother was yelling for him to help during the attack, and he couldn't do anything because he was also being raped. This weighs heavily on him throughout his life. They clean up the mess and get rid of the bodies and never tell anyone, including their father, about what happened. Savannah tried killing herself three days later. At this point during the session, he breaks down into tears and cries in Susan's arms. The way that she holds him is almost sensual.

A few days later Susan has a party at her home and invites Tom. They are talking and she says that she thinks her husband is having an affair with his pianist. At the dinner table, Susan's husband mocks Tom and goes on to tell everyone that his sister is a patient of Susan's. First of all, Susan should not have been discussing her patients with her husband. At least not in detail to where he would know that it was Tom's sister. Had she kept this information confidential, it would have prevented her husband from telling a room full of people. This all escalates into an argument that ends in Tom and Susan leaving and going back to his place where they end up having sex and she stays overnight.

The fact that Tom is not really a patient of Susan's is almost irrelevant at this point simply because their relationship is too similar to that of patient-therapist. Granted, he would never have been there had it not been for his sister's suicide attempt, he is still discussing personal and private things about his life that make him vulnerable to her. She should have known not to cross that line. Both of them are in delicate situations regarding their marriages. The issue of transference and counter transference are both present in this situation. They start seeing each other and confess their love for one another, and although they aren't sure where any of it will take them, they enjoy the moments as they come.

Savannah ends up getting better with the help of Tom serving as her memory and Sally calls to tell Tom she wants him to come home. This breaks Susan's heart and she says, "You love her more", to which is response was, "No, just longer".

Tom realizes through the therapy and talking with Susan that he needed to accept to love his mother and father with all of their flaws in order to move on from his childhood. Susan helped both Tom and Savannah to come to terms with the family secret and realize that it wasn't their fault. I think that the fact that Tom was not Susan's actual patient helped in not causing more damage when they brought a sexual relationship into the equation. They were both able to move past that without any significant harm, other than sadness at the loss of something they thought felt right.