The Door in the Floor Review
by Jonathan F. Richards (moviecritic AT prodigy DOT net)August 10th, 2004
Jonathan Richards
THE DOOR IN THE FLOOR
Directed by Tod Williams
Adapted by Williams from the first part of the novel by John Irving
With Jeff Bridges, Kim Basinger
R, 111 minutes
COLE COMFORT
Like Ted Cole, the enigmatic failed writer and failed human being at the center of the movie, The Door in the Floor shows flashes of brilliance and wonderful craftsmanship. It also dallies through passages of tedious self-consciousness and wrong choices. It's the second movie from writer/director Tod Williams, whose previous effort was the largely forgettable 1998 feature The Adventures of Sebastian Cole (curious trivia, this fixation of Williams on central characters named Cole, but the two are no relation.) The movie is adapted from the self-contained first section of John Irving's long novel A Widow for One Year.
Ted Cole (Jeff Bridges) is a writer and illustrator of children's books. He set out to be a novelist, but didn't have the chops for it. So he veered off into kiddie literature, where the short form of the genre permits him to obsess over minutiae of word and punctuation choices. His subject matter is dark and brooding, filled with murky symbolism and illustrated with black-and-white brush drawings in the school of James Thurber. But kids must eat this downbeat stuff up, because Ted and his wife Marion (Kim Basinger) live in a sprawling beachfront house to die for in the Hamptons.
The Coles suffered a tragic loss years earlier with the death of their teenaged sons, Tom and Timothy, in an automobile accident. Both parents are still grieving, but Ted has diverted himself with writing, booze, racquetball, and women. Marion has remained sunk in a deep and brooding depression, from which not even the birth of their replacement child, 4-year-old Ruth (Elle Fanning), can redeem her. Readers of the novel will remember that Ruth grows up to be a famous writer, but not in this movie.
For the summer Ted hires a boy from Exeter, the prep school the dead sons attended, to be his assistant. Eddie (Jon Foster) is an aspiring writer who seems to idolize Ted, for reasons that aren't exactly clear. "I've read all your novels, and your children's books," he blurts, an accomplishment that even Ted finds bizarre. Ted doles out the occasional critique and word of writerly wisdom ("use specific details"), but Eddie's duties are largely non-literary. He's been hired mainly to drive Ted (who's lost his license for drunk driving) to sexual assignations; secondarily, he's been chosen for his resemblance to the dead sons, a resemblance Ted hopes will rouse Marion from her funk.
Eddie rouses her nicely. The kid becomes infatuated with the beautiful Marion, and when she walks in on him masturbating over her bra and panties, it's not long before she expands his solo act into a pas de deux, an act repeated with great energy, stamina, and enthusiasm throughout the summer. It's not clear whether or not this goes beyond what Ted had planned, but there's a definite theme of incest here. It's a theme visited earlier in a scene where Ruth wakes her father in the middle of the night to investigate a noise ("The sound of someone trying not to make a sound.") Ted, who sleeps in the nude, shows no modesty in front of the little girl, who makes a comment about his male equipment. There's no active incest, but it's a shadow we're meant to think about.
The movie has a lot of strengths, and none greater than its acting. Bridges is terrific. He's a thoroughly natural actor, a physical presence who provides a secure launching pad for every character he undertakes. His rumpled, self-absorbed Ted is a user and a cad, but there's also a gentleness about him that softens the edges and makes him appealing. It's a performance that will earn some backing when Oscar nominations are discussed. Basinger delivers her bottomless sadness through a modulated sweetness that makes it all the more poignant. Foster (younger brother of Six Feet Under's Ben Foster) is irritating at first with his puppydog naiveté, but as his character grows in assurance so does his acting, and by the end he's earned his place in the company he keeps. And Fanning (also a younger sibling, of Cat in the Hat's Dakota Fanning) does fine as the serious little girl.
Director Williams makes some mistakes. The worst is a jarring slapstick sequence involving one of Ted's sexual conquests (Mimi Rogers), who doesn't take well to being dumped, and pursues him first wielding a carving knife and then driving an SUV, to the accompaniment of a jaunty ain't-we-got-fun music track. Another misjudgment is the slow, self-consciously hollow pace of early scenes designed to show how empty it all is. But the good scenes more than offset the bad, and there's one in a frame shop that is a pure delight.
There are plenty of places in the movie that make us uncomfortable, but feeling uncomfortable is part of the point, and it's not a bad thing. Door is riddled with puzzling things to think and talk about, some that don't make sense and some that do. It's stacked high with symbolism. Cars are a big one, beginning with Marion giving Eddie the keys to slip into her ignition and start her motor, and ending with one of John Irving's signature descriptions of an awful auto accident. Leading the pack is the life-and-death symbolism of the title, which comes from the title of one of Ted's books (but the children's-book sound of it should not mislead anyone into thinking this is a movie for kids.) For fans of John Irving's writing, this adaptation for the most part serves the author well, and lets his voice come through.
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