The Door in the Floor

Rating:
Summary: One of the Best Films of 2004
Review: "The Door in the Floor" is based upon a portion of the novel
"A Widow for One Year" by John Irving (who wrote the book and
screenplay for "The Cider House Rules"). I've never read the book, but I can barely begin to explain how much I liked this movie. It is a very sad film and is very unique. I watchd the documentary on the DVd where Irving talked about the book and personally (even though i've never read the book) I think this portion is all that needs to be a movie.This movie entranced me in a way that most movies don't. The performances,ALL the performances are great.Kim Basinger in my oppinion gives the very best performance.The pain she expresses in the movie seems real. This is in my oppinion,an Oscar worth performance. As for Jeff Bridges,he also gives a stunning performance. I've not seen a lot of Jeff Bridges movies, I haven't even seen "Seabiscuit"
,"
but this film does feature the best performances of the year.
The movie,which is stunningly written, is about Ted Cole (Bridges). Ted is a childrens author who writes disturbing stuff that is almost funny in how sickly twisted it is. He lives with his wife Marion (Basinger) and his daughter Ruth (Elle Fanning,
who I think is related to Dakota Fanning). Marion is asically an empty shell. Their two sons are dead and Marion is still suffering from it, to such an extent she is not even able to express love for her daughter. Ted has grown tired of this so he suggests a summer separation. A very weird idea,involves them alternating when they stay at the house and when they stay at some apartment. For the summer,Ted hires young Eddie (Jon Foster)
as a writing assistant. Eddie falls in love with Marion, and begins masturbating to her clothes and such.Eventually Eddie and
Marion begin an affair, which Ted both encourages but also resents. The film which is truly a sad film features some hidden jokes. Like a scene where Ruth wakes up crying and Ted tries to find out whats wrong. Marion and Eddie eventually come in and this is what happens:
Marion:What's wrong?
Ted: She heard banging noises.
Marion:What kind of...banging noises?
The ending which is the type of ending I would typically hated, is weirdly perfect. It's also somewhat haunting. But,see this film. You will not regret it.A+

Rating:
Summary: The door in the floor leads to a squash court?
Review: "The Door In The Floor" leads to an upstairs squash court. Meaning? So many rave reviews of this film, but I just don't see it.. or get it. Artistic, indie, off beat, whatever. Jeff Bridges ("The Fisher King", "Arlington Road", "Fearless", "Thunderbolt & Lightfoot", "Starman") is a wonderful actor and he totally resurrected his career with the academy award nominated "Seabiscuit" in 2003. In "The Door In The Floor", Bridges' alufeness is engaging and downright funny at times. Kim Bassinger is just the opposite - almost robotic in her role as the disengaged wife. The storyline centers around a dissolving marriage brought on by two sons dying in an auto accident. Bridges' character is a writer of children's books whom has affairs with the models that pose for him. The cinematography is wonderful (hence, 1 of the 2 stars I've given for this review... the other for actor Bridges) of the ocean and the Hamptons out on Long Island, NY (tho some of the beautiful homes shot might well be on Cape Cod or Martha's Vineyard). I found Bassinger's performance to be cold and calculated as she seduces a young teenager brought into the house to help Bridge's character write. Her past beauty and acting skills are close to being void in 2004. This movie did not grab me at all - weak story, too slow, and overall average acting - outside of a few fine spots from Bridges. Rated "R" for a few cuss words and lots of nudity that I could've done without (including Bridges' backside). Replay value = slim to none.

Rating:
Summary: A discreetly captivating piece on grief
Review: Adaptations of Irving novels have always been problematic (at least in my own experience). 'The Cider House Rules' was clumsily executed while 'Simon Birch' can barely be called a worthwhile flim. Writer/director Tod "Kip" Williams has broken the Irving curse with a film based on not an entire novel, but the first third of Irving's 'A Widow for One Year,' based on the notion that this section's three central characters are all capable of maintaining an interesting film.

Williams turned out to be absolutely right. In adapting only the first, self-sufficient third of the sprawling life portrait, Williams avoids having to remove crucial moments and contrain the ever-important cycle of life. Irving's own poeticism is intact, as well, since there is no need to drastically restructure or slice-and-dice dialogue.

'The Door in the Floor' is a rumination on grief. Its main characters --Ted (Jeff Bridges) and Marion (Kim Basinger) Cole-- each represent the various reactions to death in the family. In this case, Marion is the half of the couple that is hit the hardest by the death of her beloved sons in an exhaustingly emotional car crash. One of the film's most brilliant shots is of Basinger's eyes, staring cold into a distance of unfathomable lengths, a distance not recognizable to those who gravitate around her empty shell of a body. Here we see she cannot manage to move on with her life, her soul drained by depression.

Ted, on the other hand, seems to be alive and well, full of heart and creativity, still thriving as "an entertainer of children" who "likes to draw." But Bridges maintains that Ted is the half of the couple that attempts to move on yet knows that there will always be a piece of himself missing, whether he'd like to admit it or not. The third party in 'The Door in the Floor' is young Eddie O'Hare (Jon Foster), who is hired by Ted more or less as a pawn in his marriage's separation rather than an assistant. Eddie resembles one of the Coles' two sons and ends up in a steamy affair with Marion that is borderline incestuous.

Initially, 'The Door in the Floor' is elevated by great performances. Jeff Bridges turns out perhaps his best performance, capturing every nuance in Ted, culminating in the telling of his sons' deaths as if reading allowed one of his own children's books. This monologue is so perfectly detailed with puncturing subtlety that his words grow to be heart-poundingly emotional, full of subtext and gravity. Kim Basinger also turns out nomination-worthy work as Marion, almost literally climbing into her character's psyche of stone through her sole vulnerability, both aspects of Marion that are conveyed with precision. Jon Foster and Mimi Rogers, as Ted's needy nude model and mistress, are both very capable and manage to leave an impression. The film's further emotional weight is complemented by an elegant score and caressed by well-composed camera work.

Rating:
Summary: An absorbing drama for adults
Review: Based on John Irving's novel, "A Widow for One Year, Tod Williams follows up his critically-lauded independent film, The Adventures of Sebastian Cole with the even more accomplished and emotionally textured The Door on the Floor. It is a fascinating look at the troubled inner lives of a married couple who have drifted apart as a result of a personal tragedy.

"Frame on the Wall: The Making of Door in the Floor" briefly explores the origins of the movie. This is a very thoughtful look at the movie with insightful observations that elevate it from the usual press kit featurette material.

"Novel to Screen: John Irving" is an interview with the famous author. He touches upon some of the cinematic adaptations of his novels.

"Anatomy of a Scene" is a program that originally aired on the Sundance Channel and examines a specific scene from the movie. It dissects how the various elements-script, cinematography and sound-come together to create a scene.

Finally, there is an audio commentary by Tod Williams, director of photography Terry Stacey, editor Affonso Goncalves, costume designer Eric Damon and composer Marcelo Zarvos. This is a technically oriented track as they talk about how shots were constructed.

The Door in the Floor examines complex adult relationships in a realistic way. They are messy, fun, sensual and painful-a jumble of emotions-part of the human experience. In this day and age it is something of a rarity: an adult drama that is intelligent and provocative without being obviously sensational about it (like Adrian Lyne movies).

Rating:
Summary: Frighteningly accurate, made bearable with a touch of comedy
Review: Becoming a parent can be the single most transitional time for a mother. This is the time she realizes the earth exists because of procreation. In her children, she sees the potential fulfillment of her every hope, her every dream. No matter how disappointed or confused she is about motherhood, she knows one thing: She would die for her children. She loves them endlessly. She knows these are not just words.

Marion (Kim Basinger) is scary because she is so real. Ask a roomful of mothers what they would do if their children died, and you might be suprised at how many say that would be the end of their life too.

(Spoiler warning!) Marion is the mother who killed herself when her children died -- even though she did not physically take her own life. She killed herself through deadening her heart.

She feels echoes of her husband's love, but he has (spoiler warning!) grabbed more firmly upon the bottle and other women to keep himself afloat and alive after the death of his sons. These distractions keep his life -- deceptively -- vibrant. Shallow, cold, distant, but (to cop the title of an old movie) "an Imitation of Life." He believes himself alive, but part of him has died, too.

Slowly, the realization of Ted's lifestyle filters through Marion's fog of dispair, giving her the strengh to leave -- completely.

This movie vividly expresses the sexual relationship between Marion and a young male assistant (to her husband) who represents both of the deeply powerful aspects of her sons -- popularity and shy wisdom.

While the character may seem perverse, I belive that Marion knew that this boy was not a flesh and blood son of hers, but rather a symbol. A Son. And she did not want the possibility of death to skew his chances of having the one thing that every teen boy values above all.

I can see where a viewer could become disgusted or confused, but I think the movie is rendered delicately enough to communicate its real message. A mother's mourning never ceases. Not through any life change, not through hope, not through anything.

Fortunately, there is enough sensitively-rendered comedy to help lift the darker moods of this movie.

Marion -- in the end -- was the central character. No other character was as important. I think it was clear in the sparse way she decorated her house, the sparse way she existed (without any care of pools or lawns or sociializing), that she had taken the role of the living dead.

Redeemingly, Kim Basinger added an element to Marion that made me think she loved her living daughter Ruth despite the fact that she (Marion) felt she had no love left in herself. (Spoiler warning!) Even when she left Ruth, you felt she loved Ruth, but that she could never acknowledge that love.

A painful, mysterious, all too real, then completely unreal movie. Five stars!

Rating:
Summary: Every teenage boy's fevered fantasy
Review: In THE DOOR IN THE FLOOR, we have an older woman seducing and sexually exploiting a teenage boy. Since the older woman is the spitting image of Kim Bassinger, how lucky can a guy get?

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 and 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.

Rating:
Summary: Wouldn't you want to open...The Door In The Floor?
Review: Quite simply, this is one of the best films of 2004, and it's a shame that great movies like this (and Garden State) were not recognized by neither the Golden Globes or the Oscars.

The Door In The Floor is a harrowing drama starring Jeff Bridges and Kim Basinger. It follows the life of Ted (Bridges), a children's book writer, and Marion (Basinger) his wife. After a happy marriage, Ted and Marion has ever since drifted apart after their two sons Thomas and Timothy died. Now, living with a daughter named Ruby, Ted works on his new book. As Ted hires an assistant, to give him some experience, things get complicated as the assistant falls for Marion. And, as you can imagine, things get pretty sticky from there on.

It is hard for a film to borrow the best elements of such classics as American Beauty and The Graduate, and not fail miserably (see We Don't Live Here Anymore), but The Door In The Floor not just pulls it off, it does it with such a flare, it seems as if it's rubbing it in your face.

Brilliant writing, brilliant directing, and brilliant, and more-than-Oscar-worthy performances by Jeff Bridges (you love him and hate him all at the same time), and Kim Basinger.

Reccomended.

Rating:
Summary: Where monsters dwell
Review: The Door In the Floor reminds us that the children's stories are really pretty frightening. (Have you really read the brothers Grimm recently?) Ted Cole (Jeff Bridges) writes such stories, among them one called The Door In the Floor, in which very bad things live beneath the titular door. Ted and his estranged wife, Marion (Kim Basinger), also live in a very bad place: a world bereft of their two sons, Thomas and Timothy, now dead for some years. How they cope, or fail to cope, with their loss is the subject of the film.

As Ted, Bridges gives as masterful a performance as I've seen in some years. He manages to make a manipulative philanderer into a sympathetic character. Without his magic, the tragedy of Ted's situation would be impossible to believe. If this isn't an award-worthy performance, I haven't seen one: its breadth is amazing, and it is apparantly effortless. Basinger invests Marion with a benumbed grief that is painful to watch. This performance makes her Oscar winning turn in LA Confidential seem almost facile by comparison. As Eddie O'Hare, the young pawn whom Ted brings into the game against his wife, Jon Foster is the weakest link in the trio. He has the requisite innocence, but not the much-needed sensitivity. He is simply too wooden. Elle Fanning is wonderful as the child the Coles had, hoping to replace their dead boys; Mimi Rogers is dead on as one of Ted's conquests--one who turns on him in a welcome bit of comic relief.

If you are sensitive to such things, the movie deserves its R rating. There is male nudity, from the rear, and full frontal female nudity. The language is about what one would expect from an R rated movie.

The Door In the Floor is truly memorable for for two big reasons. 1)Jeff Bridges is spectacularly fine, without appearing to be spectacular at all. 2)When you reach the very last scene, you will realize the full import of Ted Cole's world-view, and you'll see the treatment of his character in the movie in a completely new light. This kind of ironic legerdemain, transforming the meaning of the entire film, lifts the whole thing onto a higher level.

Rating:
Summary: Jeff Bridges' career performance
Review: This film would be a bit depressing and slow for my taste if not for the unbelievably complex and comic performance delivered by Jeff Brigdes. His performance alone makes this film worth 5 stars.

While some of the story is serious and sad, a decent portion (particularly a chase sequence near the end) is laugh-out-loud funny. You could almost call this a dark comedy rather than a domestic drama. Either way, the character of Ted Cole - complex and flawed (but still very likable) - is a showcase for Jeff Bridges' talent. Not to be missed.


Rating:
Summary: BRIDGES
Review: Yes, Jeff Bridges is superb, but "The Door in The Floor" doesn't add up to much. Aside from the bland symbolism of the title, the film is only a romantic drama leaning heavily on the sadness of post-grieving parents adjusting to life after the death of their teenage sons. The details of that tragedy are given more importance than seem necessary and the film ultimately centers on a "Summer of '42" plotline and Jeff Bridges' breezy seasoned performance.