Word: lowenstein
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...makes the trip North, where he meets Savannah's psychiatrist Susan Lowenstein, who stands as the antithesis of Colleton County. Throughout the slow and painful process of aiding Lowenstein in helping his sister, Tom reveals the terrible day that he, his mother and Savannah were raped by three escaped convicts. As if the rape of their person were not sufferance enough, the rape of their minds by their mother--who swears them to a pact of secrecy--only added to their torment...
Conroy systematically exposes rotting southern ideals and prejudices through Lowenstein's continuous probing. Slowly the mask is unpeeled. But The Prince of Tides is not a celebration of the ethos of New York City. For in the end, Tom returns to the South, this time content with himself, and conscious of the "demonology" of his youth. While by no means an autobiographical work, one gets the sense that Conroy is exploring his own relationship with the South. It is our good fortune that he has chosen...
...LOWENSTEIN lifts a good deal of his material from Alex Cox's classic depiction of punk life, Sid and Nancy, including a fantasy sequence that Cox could sue him for if scenes were copyrighted. He needn't bother, however, since Lowenstein never even approaches the level of intelligence and cohesiveness that made Cox's movie so compelling. Lowenstein doesn't understand that the way to portray chaos and boredom is not to be chaotic and boring...
...audience are the characters. They are disaffected refugees from the stifling mores of their middle-class parents. Rebellion is a fine thing, but this motley bunch of outcasts replace the materialism and hypocrisy of their bourgeois upbringing with complete apathy--their lives are as messy as their house. Lowenstein wants to be daring by eliminating any entertaining conventions of movie-making and we're supposed to be hip enough not to care. But if the stream of people beating a retreat out of the theatre was any evidence, not caring means not staying...
...Lowenstein ultimately betrays his own disorganized esthetic and falls back on the same conventional plot devices that his movie ostensibly tries to subvert. There's a scene where Saskia Post, as Hutchence's girlfriend Anna, drives around in a jealous snit because her boyfriend has kissed someone else. It's a scene that would fit better in a John Hughes teen flick. Dogs is at its most banal during the infuriatingly run-of-the-mill sex scenes between Hutchence and Post. Blue Lagoon had more spice in its sex life...