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MOVIE CRITIQUE:
This movie has been adapted by director and screenwriter Tod Williams from the first part of John Irving's novel, A Widow
for One Year. One must therefore assume that there is some growth of the characters in the rest of the story as there is very
little here. Every character in this movie seems hell bent on self destruction with the result being that the one innocent
in this movie, the child, Ruth Cole, wonderfully played by Dakota Fanning's little sister, Elle Fanning, will probably be
messed up for the rest of her life in spite of the fact that everyone is always protesting how much they love her.
I understand that John Irving writes very well. There is an old saying in the movie business that good writers adapt poorly
to movies, while less accomplished writes do much better since they haven't gotten inside the heads of their readers. In any
event, Irving's books, like Cider House Rules, The World According to Garp, Simon Birch, and The Hotel New Hampshire, seem
to be always set a little off center, as is this story.
Ted Cole and Marion Cole (Jeff Bridges and Kim Basinger) had originally been a happily married couple until a ski trip
out west many years before during which they were inadvertently responsible for the horrific deaths of their two teenaged
sons in a car accident. They were pinned in the back seat of the family car and they watched in horror as one son was killed
instantly and the other died soon afterwards as he bled to death from a severed leg.
This would be enough to wreck any marriage, but Ted and Marion have hung together in spite of it all. She is a shattered
woman who has retreated into her shell while he has attempted to get on with his career as a writer and an illustrator. (For
the record, Jeff Bridges actually painted all the illustrations used in this movie.)
Both of their sons had been students at Exeter, and Ted has recently discovered another student in an Exeter yearbook
who is almost a dead wringer for their oldest son. On a lark, he decides to hire him as a writer's assistant for the summer.
His reasons for doing this are open to question and interpretation. He doesn't really need a writer's assistant and he is
far too self absorbed to be much of a help as a critic for this budding new student writer.
What Ted really needs is a chauffeur to bring him to and fro, the fro mostly being to the home of Evelyn Vaughn (Mimi
Rogers), a fellow wealthy Hamptonite with whom he is currently having a tryst. To call it a love affair would be putting too
kind a definition on their relationship, as his trysts are sordid and quick. And the reason he needs a chauffeur is that he
has lost his driver's license after too many convictions for DUI.
Ted also hopes, in some deranged way, that this student, Eddie O'Hare (Jon Foster), will shake Marion out of her self
imposed shell, but his likeness to her oldest son has an element of sickness about it. When Jon and Marion later end up having
sex "60 times" during the course of his stay at their rustic shingle mansion on the shore of the Hamptons, the smell
of Oedipal incest fills the air.
Now, the screen persona of Jeff Bridges is well known as he has been an immensely popular actor for many years. He has
this "golly, gee shucks" good natured little boy look about him and a warm smile that instantly warms you to his
presence. He is also intelligent and talented, and he brings all these personality traits to his role as Ted Cole in this
movie. However, don't let his screen persona fool you, for in "The Door in the Floor" he plays a misogynistic monster
out to destroy all the women who have had the misfortune to succumb to his charms.
Ted Cole is a very successful author and illustrator of children's stories, a profession that already places him in good
stead with the mothers of the world. But he also likes to paint portraits of women. When asked which he prefers, he obliquely
replies that he is only an entertainer of children in an effort to obfuscate the question, but what he really likes to do
is to crush the self esteem of any woman he is with.
Oh, he starts off innocently enough painting their portraits, but gradually he works on his subjects to disrobe more and
more until they are fully unclothed. Then he paints them not as subjects, but as objects, and not as women, but as possessors
of sexual appendages, which he then draws in explicit detail. During this time, he has also seduced them and the mind games
continue until the woman of the moment has lost all of her self respect. Ted then dumps her in the cruelest manner possible
and he then goes on to his next conquest, to the next woman who may happen to enter into his web of deceit, lies, and corruption.
His sexual proclivities started way before the accident that killed their two sons, so he can hardly blame his misogyny
on that traumatic experience. In fact, his wife, Marion Cole, is completely aware his sexual mind games as he had done the
same to her many years before. Now all he has left is two drawings of her in the early stages of his portraiture, drawings
of her while she is still a beautiful subject with an inner radiance of femininity and contentment.
Marion Cole (Kim Basinger) starts off attracting considerable sympathy in her soulful plight as a grieving mother. It
should be noted here that Kim Basinger fits her role to a "T." However, one must eventually inquire as to how long
is she going to play this role of a victimized mother whose life is in a state of near paralysis? Don't these people know
about counseling? I would imagine that half the population of the Hamptons has been to a shrink at one time or another in
their lives, and yet there is no mention of this proactive course in emotional healing in this movie.
Then we come to learn that the birth of her daughter, Ruth, was an unwanted event promoted by her husband as a partial
solution to moving beyond their tragedy. While she is an attentive mother to Ruth, her heart is not in this to the point that
she really doesn't even have a desire to fight for child custody should they ever get divorced.
Eddie O'Hare is a normal seventeen year old teenager who is filled with hormonal urges. These urges reach a flash point
as soon as he meets his new hostess, and he uses pictures of Marion or some of her undergarments as aids in his frequent masturbation.
When Marion catches him masturbating over her bra and panties that he has placed on his bed, she somehow arrives at the idea
that initiating this young man to the joy of sex with an older woman is a wonderful idea.
Of course, in a summer home where the doors are usually left open to catch the ocean breezes, it isn't long before Ruth
stumbles in on the two of them having sex together, "doggie style." This is naturally a grotesque sight for this
young child which not only horrifies her but soon gets back to Ted, so the rest of the summer is filled with the undercurrents
of the bitter harvest of the forbidden sexual linking by all the participants.
Like I said earlier, these people are really screwed up. It doesn't make for much of a movie.
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MOVIE SYNOPSIS:
Ted Cole (Jeff Bridges), a well known author of popular children's books, and his wife, Marion (Kim Basinger), are spending
the summer at their lovely ocean side home in East Hampton, New York. The home is a romantic older home of the shingle architectural
style. It is spacious and has a huge front porch that faces the ocean.
The home may be romantic, but the couple aren't due to a shocking tragedy in their personal lives in which they lost their
two teenaged sons in a car accident. A daughter, Ruth (Elle Fanning) was born after the accident and she lives with the emotional
distance of her parents by memorizing every one of the many family pictures that line the second floor hallway of their home.
Her particular favorites are those in which her two deceased brothers are shown and the family is still living in the glow
of happier days.
It is another beautiful sunny day and Marion is sitting out on a lounge chair on the front lawn doing nothing in particular.
Ted comes out to her and tells her that he thinks that a trial separation is in order. He will rent an apartment in town and
they will alternate spending nights with Ruth in the home.
And, as he doesn't drive due to the fact that he is a convicted alcoholic, he has decided to hire a writer's apprentice
for the summer. He has picked a boy out of a yearbook from Exeter, his high school alma mater. The young man, Eddie O'Hare
(Jon Foster), is wearing an Exeter letter sweater in the picture just as their two sons, who were also students at Exeter,
often did before they were killed. In fact, Eddie O'Hare bears a remarkable resemblance to Thomas Cole (Tod Harrison Williams),
their oldest son and the former family favorite.
On the day of his arrival, Marion drives her Mercedes sports car out to the ferry to pick Eddie up. She is a vision of
loveliness and mature sexuality to the young man and he instantly falls in lust with her. Eddie is very nearly caught masturbating
over a picture of Marion by Ted and Ruth as they barge into his bedroom one evening looking for a photograph that she must
see before she goes to bed.
He is, or is not, depending upon your point of view, as fortunate shortly thereafter when Marion walks in and finds him
masturbating over her bra and panties which he has placed on his bed. More embarrassed than shocked by this surprise, she
seeks to ameliorate the situation by placing her bra and panties on the bed covered with her lilac colored sweater, a sweater
which he had confessed to her that he had found particularly attractive as she was wearing it when he first met her.
It is not long before Marion's sexuality is aroused by this young man's youth, vitality, attentiveness, and innocence,
for he is still a virgin. She seduces him and they are soon spending the summer coupling as often as possible, "60 times,"
as he brags later to a store manager in town. The female manager wants to hire him on the spot in one of the few of this film's
humorous scenes.
Ted Cole gives an occasional book reading in one of the book stores in East Hampton and it is either here or at one of
the area's many social functions where he meets fawning women who he then invites to model in his office located in a refurbished
old barn on their property.
His sideline of painting portraits of women conflict with his being "an entertainer of children," but it is
clear that he uses his career as a bait in his constant trolling for female subjects. They quickly end up as liaisons which
continue until Cole has painted them in ever more objective and humiliating ways in a cruel mind game meant to strip them
of all of their self respect. Once they have been reduced to a state of complete shame and helplessness, he dumps them and
moves on to the next subject that he might have trapped in his web of sexual corruption.
He is currently in the final stages of this process with Evelyn Vaughn (Mimi Rogers), another wealthy Hamptonite who lives
somewhat near to the Cole residence. As he can't drive and, more importantly, because he wants to avoid the final scene, he
sends Eddie over to tell her he won't make it on Friday even though she has set aside the whole day to be with him. Realizing
that she is being dumped, Evelyn throws all her "portraits" out on the street with the result that drawings of breasts
and vaginas are soon littering the country roads of East Hampton.
So, both parents are cruelly using their subjects for their own perverted sexual purposes during a summer of disintegrating
relationships, and it is in this toxic brew that poor little Ruth Cole is forced to seek love, attention, and comfort. Thank
heaven that she also has a part time nanny, for this young girl (Bijou Philips), who is only a little older than Eddie O'Hare,
ends up being the only normal person on the property other than her charge, poor young Ruth.
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