Barbra Streisand Collection (The Mirror Has Two Faces / The Prince of Tides / The Way We Were) (3-DVD)

THE MIRROR HAS TWO FACES: Barbra Streisand both directs and plays the lead as Rose Morgan, a dowdy English Lit professor at Columbia University. Jeff Bridges is Professor Gregory Larkin, her foil, who has been burned by love and sworn off sex. The two cerebral Columbia professors commit to a perfectly sensible but passionless paper marriage, based on their intellectual common ground. The earth moves, however, when Rose redesigns her look in order to invoke the hots in her spouse and bolster her sagging self-esteem. This feel-good romance finds Streisand a little older but still the eager ingenue, ready to blush at her suitor's chivalrous blunders or bristle at her crabby mother (Lauren Bacall).

THE WAY WE WERE: Sydney Pollack directs Robert Redford and Barbra Streisand in this sensitive and moving tale of the romance of two individuals whose political ideologies are exact opposites. Streisand won an Academy Award nomination for her performance as Katie Morosky, a Jewish student radical who falls in love with Hubbell Gardner (Redford), a conservative privileged writer. The two interact from the beginning of their college courtship through the Hollywood-blacklisting era of the 1950s.

PRINCE OF TIDES: Barbra Streisand's adaptation of Pat Conroy's lyrical, passionate novel concerns romance as it emerges from the ashes of a traumatic childhood. Southerner Tom Wingo is going through a midlife crisis: He's got no job, a disintegrating marriage, and a drinking problem. But he gets a jolt of reality when he hears that his sister has attempted suicide. Tom instantly heads to New York to meet Susan Lowenstein, his sister's psychiatrist. As Tom provides Susan with information about his sibling and their dysfunctional family, the two become more intimate and soon begin an affair. As the romance blossoms, the repressed Tom and the guarded Susan find they are able to help each other with their respective problems. In particular, Tom is finally able to discuss a devastating incident from his youth.

Anthology | Family Crises | Marriage | Romance | Romances | Romantic Comedy