Performances Soar in Powerful "Door"

Whatever the answer, the one avoidable fact about “The Door in the Floor” is that there are moments unlike any others put on screen this year. It is a startling, eye-opening motion picture experience filled with virtuoso and daring performances by a cast of both veterans and newcomers. If there is justice in the cinematic world than Oscar – never mind its summer release date – should be looking at this movie very closely, if only to be reminded of what great acting really is.

The Cole family lives with misery. It can be seen in the myriad of black and white pictures lining the halls and littering the bedrooms. For four-year-old Ruth (Elle Fanning), these pictures are a link to brothers she will never know, while for mother Marion (Kim Basinger) they are a constant reminder of innocence lost and parenthood shattered. But for artist and children’s book writer Ted (Jeff Bridges), these images are a way to try and start over, a way to link the present and past with a hopefully brighter future.

But don’t let his beguiling smile fool you, Ted is just as much a wreck as his wife, but instead of turning to stone he drowns his sorrow in Scotch and sordidly carnal affairs. All the same, he worries for his wife, stews that she’s become a bad mother for Ruth and that he can’t trust her to do what’s best for their daughter. So into their midst he brings aspiring writer Eddie (Jon Foster), a beacon of youthful exuberance that just might be able to make Ruth smile for the first time in ages.

An aspiring writer, the young man thinks he’s come to the Cole’s New England home to assist and learn at the hands of a master. But Ted’s reasons for bringing Eddie to their home are much more cerebral, and by the time he figures it out he’ll be just as deep into the Cole family tragedy as if he lived through it firsthand.

Part “The Graduate,” part “Mystic River,” director Tod Williams’ adaptation of the first third of Irving’s A Window for One Year goes into increasingly cerebral territory the likes of which the majority of films run away from. It is an engrossing, peculiarly funny epic of dysfunction and pain, redemption seemingly an afterthought for those at a loss as to how to survive after a tragedy. There is so much power, so much pathos, Williams validates his earlier promise with “The Adventures of Sebastian Cole” by going into even riskier terrain.

Unfortunately, some of it falls just outside of the young filmmaker’s reach. He’s a completely at a loss to handle Bijou Phillips flustered nanny character Alice, leaving the actress stranded with two scenes that befuddle more than anything else. Williams also changes tone a bit too jarringly, switching from comedy to drama to farce to something sort of in-between a few times too many. And while the film is shattering from moment to moment, as a whole it is strangely aloof, never boiling over with the emotional tempest I couldn’t help but feel the director was shooting for.

Yet, “The Door in the Floor” is a strong, captivating picture impossible to take your eyes off of. For everything that doesn’t quit work, Williams stages scene after scene that shine like beacons of truth. Some standouts: A sweetly embarrassing and poignant moment where Marion walks in on Eddie masturbating to her lingerie, Ted’s cold detachment as he moves the head and limbs of one of his models (Mimi Rogers), Eddie revealing all to a fascinated frame shop owner while a glowing Ruth looks on in awe. So much works, so much connects, it’s easy to forgive that which doesn’t.

It helps, of course, that Williams has assembled a cast willing to take their game to an entirely new level. Basinger, quite simply, has never been better (and that includes her Oscar-winning turn in “L.A. Confidential”) making Marion so much more than a sexually provocative symbol of despair. Watching her face light up as she realizes just how much Eddie has become infatuated with her, watching the flash of cognition as she contemplates her actions, is wondrous. “I’d rather be no mother to her than a bad mother,” she says at one point in the film and, lord help me, my breath went cold with the delicate power of her inflections.

Newcomers Fanning (sister of “Man on Fire” star Dakota) and Foster are equal to the task, each bringing so much more to their roles than there at first appears to be. Foster, in particular, has a steady intelligence hiding behind his eyes, a determination to make the most of this bizarre situation that borders on the sublime. Also quite good is Rogers, audaciously showing off more than just her range. It is, quite literally, a nakedly raw performance, and the actress makes an indelible impression in a film littered with more than its share of them.

But in the end, this is Bridges’ showcase and, once again, the veteran actor fails to disappoint. I just love the way he can make the simplest of lines seem like both a gregarious offhand nod to his talents as a storyteller as well as a slimy sexual innuendo just dripping in smarmy masochistic charm. Whether strutting around the halls of his home naked or running across the beach from a rather pissed-off model, the actor makes this film his own personal playground. Much like Kurt Russell, Bridges proves once again that he is one of our best, unrecognized talents. Time after time he continually makes every film, every performance, singularly his own, “The Door in the Floor” no exception.