Starring: Jeff Bridges, Kim Basinger
Director: Tod Williams
Rated: MA15+
THERE have been a number of versions of John Irving’s novels – Hotel New Hampshire, World According to Garp, Simon Birch.
Irving himself wrote the screenplay (and won an Oscar) for The Cider House Rules.
The Door in the Floor has received his blessing as a version of the first third of his novel, Widow for a Year.
This is the kind of film that is described as independent. It is not a studio film and it does not rely on a happy ending.
The focus of the film is a 16 year-old (a believable performance by Jon Foster) who spends a summer as an assistant to a celebrated writer of somewhat eerie children’s stories – like the story of the sound of someone trying not to make a sound.
The film ends in a squash court with the writer literally going down through the door in the floor.
The author and his wife have not recovered emotionally from the deaths of their sons in a car accident – and it is dramatically effective that we do not see the accident scene until the end of the film.
The writer has become hardened and is alienated from his wife who is less able to cope. He is dependent on the young man for typing, chores around the house and, especially, for driving.
In the meantime, the inexperienced youngster is infatuated with the wife. What follows is a sexual initiation, something of a blend of the quiet care of Tea and Sympathy and the exploitation by Mrs Robinson of The Graduate.
The writer, meantime, is involved in a grim affair with a woman he is sketching.
The description makes these goings-on sound sordid. In many ways they are. But that is not the whole point.
Traumatised people act in unpredictable and often destructive ways. This is clearly what is happening to these characters. The events are sometimes bizarre, but they need a moral and emotional sensitivity to the complexities rather than a righteous dismissal.
Jeff Bridges is the writer and gives yet another interesting and complex performance, a blend of the genial, the controlling, the desperate and the vicious.
Kim Basinger is the grief-stricken mother who leads on the willing young man.
Mimi Rogers has the difficult role of the artist’s model, victim of the writer’s degradation. The young daughter is played by Elle Fanning (younger sister of Dakota Fanning).
This is a film of moral dead ends and byways, where people are trapped, trap themselves and can escape only through their door in the floor.
