The Door in the Floor [DVD] [2005] [Region 1] [US Import] [NTSC]

Ted Cole is relating his new children's story. He is a child's book author. This paragraph gives us a glimpse and a sense of the strange and dangerous images/thoughts that emanate from this man. We first meet Ted Cole (Jeff Bridges) when he is showing a picture of his new summer assistant to his wife, Marion (Kim Basinger). She, of little emotional reaction and few words, glances at the picture and wonders "What will this boy do?" In fact this boy, Eddie (Jon Foster) will accomplish a great deal. He walks into a marriage that is dissolving, and he discovers that much of his job will be to drive Ted, who lost his license to drinking under the influence. Some of his time will be spent re-typing the daily manuscript of the book Ted is writing. Some of his time will be spent caring for Ruth, the young child born to Ted and Marion. Some of his time will be spent having sex with Marion. And, the rest of the time will be spent trying to understand what is happening in this household. He does know that the couple's two sons were killed ten years prior and it seems this marriage has been teetering since that time.

Jeff Bridges shows the agility and immense acting ability he has in this movie. A man with many secrets, trying to find the love he has lost with many degrading affairs. Kim Basinger belays little emotion except in her face and in her voice. She is a woman who becomes mute with depression upon remembrance of her two dead sons. Jon Foster, who should be a little over his head with the acting abilities of those who surround him, holds his own. A movie with many hidden secrets and hidden agendas. A movie of love lost and families lost, and what is to be done with this little girl, Ruth who so loves her parents? "A Door In The Floor" don't go down it; don't explore it, because if you do you will find the secrets at the bottom. And, you don't want that, do you? Recommended. prisrob

Author Ted Cole (Jeff Bridges) and his wife Marion (Bassinger) live on the seashore in the East Hamptons with their daughter Ruth (Elle Fanning). The couple had also had two sons, but they were killed as teenagers in a particularly gruesome auto accident. Since then, Marion has withdrawn emotionally from her husband. It doesn't help that Ted, also a sketch artist, has sordid sexual affairs with his models, mostly local women drawn to his fame as a writer of children's books. So now, Ted and Marion begin a trial separation, the two alternating solo nights at home caring for Ruth with stays at the "apartment in town". In the meantime, Ted hires a high school junior, the 16-year old Eddie (Jon Foster, resembling a very young Ryan O'Neal), to help with the editing of his next book. Eddie immediately falls in lust with Marion, who subsequently seduces him with minimal effort, and who, by Eddie's reckoning, has coitus with him 60 times by the film's end.

THE DOOR IN THE FLOOR has manipulation as its theme; Ted and Marion manipulate Eddie and each other. Eddie is the innocent party here, though it could be argued that sleeping with another man's wife isn't blameless. For his part, Ted wants custody of Ruth if his troubled marriage leads to divorce, so he hires Eddie, who resembles the oldest, dead son, knowing the attraction he'll have for Marion, and vice versa. Ted wants Marion to have an affair with the boy, thus rendering her judicially unfit to be a guardian. On the other hand, Marion freely admits that having Ruth was a mistake, so perhaps she doesn't want custody anyway; her seduction of Eddie certainly seems calculated. Indeed, she wonders out loud if her oldest son ever had sex before he died, and substitutes the virginal Eddie for the former in her own private Sex Ed class.

This film has a superficial resemblance to 2004's CLOSER in that it's about adults assaulting one another using sex as the weapon. While the emotional violence in the latter is more spontaneous and heated, here it seems coldly calculated. The dramatic tone is better maintained in CLOSER, however. THE DOOR IN THE FLOOR includes a slapstick sequence wherein Ted's current mistress comes after him first with a carving knife, than an SUV. While this provides the audience with comic relief, it mars the film's consistency. For that reason, I'm subtracting a star.

Ted and Marion are two world-wise grown-ups emotionally exhausted with each other probing the limits of their residual relationship seeking justification for the ultimate break-up, and Eddie is the means to an end. While I'm not an avid fan of Jeff Bridges, I've seen enough of his screen characters to suggest that this is perhaps his most complex and nuanced role to date. It's a performance worth an Oscar nomination. Bassinger's Marion is perhaps too controlled a character to provide the substrate for a great dramatic performance, but, at 51, Kim is still a Hot Babe, and that's enough for me.

Adapted from one part of John Irving novel, it basically tells the story of a marriage breakdown, precipitated by an earlier family tragedy and focusses on one summer, when Ted Cole (Bridges as a children's author) employs a young, naive student who is a would-be writer to be his assistant.

Bridges, as always, lends his considerable talent to a role that requires him to be an eccentric ass. Basinger is equally strong as the tortured and fragile wife, still coming to terms with the accident.

Where the movie works is in the calibre of the acting, with all the main actors showing respect and understanding of the issues.

Where it doesn't work is with the Mrs Robinson-esque plot strand between Kim Basinger's fragile mother and the naive teenage student. Although this clearly is a symptom of the marriage breakdown, it detracts from the real issue, which is Bridges and Basinger's destruction as a happily married couple.

A thoughtful film, but one that doesn't quite add up to the sum of its parts.