The Door in the Floor

A summer on Long Island. Ted Cole is a successful writer and illustrator of children's books, and his marriage to Marion has been hollow since the death of their two sons in an accident. Ted hires sixteen year old Eddie as his summer assistant. Something begins between Marion and Eddie, and Ted knows. Four year old Ruth is in the house, watching all of it. Tod Williams writes and directs. Jeff Bridges plays Ted, Kim Basinger plays Marion, Jon Foster plays Eddie and Elle Fanning plays Ruth, in one of her earliest parts. The source is John Irving's A Widow for One Year, but the film takes only the first section of it. The novel runs on into Ruth's adulthood. The film never opens that door and stays inside the one summer. The title comes from that section too: it is the name of one of Ted's children's books, the door in the floor. The book frightens children, which is Irving's whole point, that the stories told to children carry the fears of the adults who write them. Who it is for: viewers who like literary adaptation, quiet drama about grief, and Jeff Bridges. Who it is not for: anyone expecting the Irving novel. The film takes a third of the book and stops where the real story begins.