"A Door in the Floor" brings part of John Irving's novel, "A Widow for One Year" to the screen with a strong cast acting their hearts and other body parts out. Reportedly, Irving is very happy with this somewhat loose and definitely abridged adaptation of his fine novel.
Here we have one of those films where there's an acute disconnect between the acting, brilliant, and the story, largely shallow and even annoying.
Ted Cole (Jeff Bridges) is a bestselling author of children's books which he both writes and illustrates. He's married to Marion (Kim Basinger). Both survived largely unscathed from a horrendous auto accident that took the lives of their two teenage sons. That's a life altering tragedy of the kind that frequently poisons fatally a previously happy marriage.
Seeking to stay together and resurrect family life the Coles had little Ruth (Elle Fanning) who is precocious and the object both of parental love and flippant victimization. But the past doesn't go away especially since almost every space in their house is covered with photos of the dead lads.
Cole hires high school student Eddie O'Hare as his summer assistant. The lad wants to be a writer and has the strange idea that serving as a factotum to an established author will fire his creative juices.
Cole has decided on a "temporary" separation from Marion - no clue that she participated in the decision which she accepts with remarkable passivity. They alternate spending the nights at their sprawling East End of Long Island manse while lucky Eddie gets his own room. And Marion. After a ridiculous scene where she finds him masturbating over her undies, she shows a calm acceptance that I doubt many other women could pull off. The two wind up entwined in a torrid series of bedroom romps where insuring that four-year-old Ruth is isolated from their hanky-panky isn't, apparently, a thought.
Ted is a boringly inveterate skirt chaser and seducer whose unique line is to get gals to pose for, initially, chaste drawings that then segue, with the subject's acquiescence, into, um, porn. (Of course Ted is interested in more than drawing the women.)
Aware of the affair, Ted doesn't seem to care very much. He ought to-in fact he should have mentioned, discreetly of course, to Marion that her sexual relationship in New York with a high school kid has a technical name - felony.
Director Tod Williams can't seem to decide if he wants to play this sort of reprise of "The Graduate" straight or for laughs. Ted is bumblingly funny as a truly inappropriate affair guaranteed to hurt their little daughter also unfolds. Laughs one minute, drama the next. The two don't mesh well.
The acting is terrific. Jeff Bridges brings to Ted Cole a mixture of cynicism, humor and a pale reflection that he really is just short of spiraling out of orbit. Kim Basinger's performance is more opaque-she has a blank, erotic intensity but we never really see what motivates her beyond the obvious unresolved grief she carries for her lost sons. As a seducer who believes she's doing a genuine service for a teen virgin, she's outfoxed by Mrs. Robinson but in her own way Basinger is compelling.
Newcomer Jon Foster as Eddie grows up in the movie to be more than a match for the far less mature Ted. Eddie walked into a situation way beyond his depth and Foster develops his character nicely.
The film doesn't capture the true vapidity of much of life amongst the affluent and successful in the Hamptons. East End life is caricatured rather than explored.
So maybe Jeff Bridges will garner an Oscar nomination. But it will be for his quixotic performance standing separated from a story about a married couple who may be the most dislikable central characters in a recent film.
7/10
Here we have one of those films where there's an acute disconnect between the acting, brilliant, and the story, largely shallow and even annoying.
Ted Cole (Jeff Bridges) is a bestselling author of children's books which he both writes and illustrates. He's married to Marion (Kim Basinger). Both survived largely unscathed from a horrendous auto accident that took the lives of their two teenage sons. That's a life altering tragedy of the kind that frequently poisons fatally a previously happy marriage.
Seeking to stay together and resurrect family life the Coles had little Ruth (Elle Fanning) who is precocious and the object both of parental love and flippant victimization. But the past doesn't go away especially since almost every space in their house is covered with photos of the dead lads.
Cole hires high school student Eddie O'Hare as his summer assistant. The lad wants to be a writer and has the strange idea that serving as a factotum to an established author will fire his creative juices.
Cole has decided on a "temporary" separation from Marion - no clue that she participated in the decision which she accepts with remarkable passivity. They alternate spending the nights at their sprawling East End of Long Island manse while lucky Eddie gets his own room. And Marion. After a ridiculous scene where she finds him masturbating over her undies, she shows a calm acceptance that I doubt many other women could pull off. The two wind up entwined in a torrid series of bedroom romps where insuring that four-year-old Ruth is isolated from their hanky-panky isn't, apparently, a thought.
Ted is a boringly inveterate skirt chaser and seducer whose unique line is to get gals to pose for, initially, chaste drawings that then segue, with the subject's acquiescence, into, um, porn. (Of course Ted is interested in more than drawing the women.)
Aware of the affair, Ted doesn't seem to care very much. He ought to-in fact he should have mentioned, discreetly of course, to Marion that her sexual relationship in New York with a high school kid has a technical name - felony.
Director Tod Williams can't seem to decide if he wants to play this sort of reprise of "The Graduate" straight or for laughs. Ted is bumblingly funny as a truly inappropriate affair guaranteed to hurt their little daughter also unfolds. Laughs one minute, drama the next. The two don't mesh well.
The acting is terrific. Jeff Bridges brings to Ted Cole a mixture of cynicism, humor and a pale reflection that he really is just short of spiraling out of orbit. Kim Basinger's performance is more opaque-she has a blank, erotic intensity but we never really see what motivates her beyond the obvious unresolved grief she carries for her lost sons. As a seducer who believes she's doing a genuine service for a teen virgin, she's outfoxed by Mrs. Robinson but in her own way Basinger is compelling.
Newcomer Jon Foster as Eddie grows up in the movie to be more than a match for the far less mature Ted. Eddie walked into a situation way beyond his depth and Foster develops his character nicely.
The film doesn't capture the true vapidity of much of life amongst the affluent and successful in the Hamptons. East End life is caricatured rather than explored.
So maybe Jeff Bridges will garner an Oscar nomination. But it will be for his quixotic performance standing separated from a story about a married couple who may be the most dislikable central characters in a recent film.
7/10