The Door in the Floor (2004)

I have some trouble with the author John Irving.  I loved his first novel "The World According to Garp" and thought the film version was pretty good too, but I have never been able to finish another of his books.  Moreover his prose does not easily translate to film; the one recent exception is "Simon Birch" which is only a loose adaptation of "A Prayer for Owen Meany".  The film above is apparently based on the first chapters only of another novel called "A Widow for one Year" which naturally I haven't read, but I suspect that it lacks the richness of the full story, and on reflection it's a pretty nasty tale.  The great underrated Jeff Bridges plays a children's author and illustrator facing writer's block and he and his wife, Kim Basinger, are mourning the loss of two teenaged sons.  They have a new daughter played by Dakota Fanning's young sister (very well too), but she does not make up their loss, particularly for the wife.  Into this comes a 16-year old assistant to Bridges whom Basinger promptly seduces and it is implied that he was only hired because of his resemblance to one of the dead sons (does this make their relationship incest?).  Meanwhile Bridges is involved with Mimi Rogers (a brave role on her part since it involves brazen nudity -- and she is no longer young) and draws lewd sketches of her.  This unhappy household finally resolves its problems in unsatisfactory ways for all of them, and I wonder how one is meant to take the last shot of Bridges literally disappearing into a door in the floor of his squash court, especially since this concept forms an integral part of one of his spooky kiddies' tales.  An interesting but disturbing feature that could never have had any hope of being a crowd-pleaser.