The Door in the Floor

The Door in the Floor is a 2004 American drama film written and directed by Tod Williams. The screenplay is based on the first third of the 1998 novel A Widow for One Year by John Irving.

The film is set in an exclusive beach community on Long Island, where children's book author and artist Ted Cole (Jeff Bridges) lives with his wife Marion (Kim Basinger) and their young daughter Ruth (Elle Fanning), who usually is supervised by her nanny Alice. Their home is filled with photographs of the couple's teenaged sons, who were killed in an automobile accident; the tragedy left Marion deeply depressed and her marriage in a shambles. The one shared experience that holds the family together is a ritualistic daily viewing of a home gallery of family photographs of the deceased sons.

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Ted and Marion temporarily separate, each alternately living in the house and in a rented apartment in town. Ted hires Eddie O'Hare (Jon Foster) to work as his summer assistant and driver, since his own license was suspended for drunk driving. An aspiring writer, Eddie admires Ted, but he soon discovers the older man is a self-absorbed womanizer with an erratic work schedule that leaves the young assistant to fill his time as best he can. Eddie and Marion soon engage in a sexual relationship, which seems not to bother Ted, who is enjoying trysts of his own with local resident Evelyn Vaughn (Mimi Rogers) during sketching sessions at which she serves as his model. When Ruth walks into the room while Eddie and her mother are making love, Ted becomes upset with his wife and advises Eddie he may have to testify about the incident if Ted decides to fight for full custody of the child.

Marion eventually leaves Ted and their daughter, taking with her all the photographs and negatives of her dead sons, save one that is being reframed after it was broken, injuring Ruth. Eddie takes the initiative to retrieve the one remaining reframed picture so that Ruth can have at least one partial image of her brothers.

Ted reveals to Eddie the story of the car accident that caused his sons' deaths. Ted suggests his and Marion's drunkenness and Ted's failure to remove snow from the rear tail light and turn signal lights likely contributed to their sons' deaths. Eddie learns more about what may have contributed to Marion's intense despair, mental states, and choice to abandon her remaining child. At the end of the film, Ted does not fully understand why Marion left, and he questions, "What kind of mother leaves her daughter?"

At the end of the story, Ted stops while playing alone in his squash court, looks into the camera with resignation, then lifts the door in the floor and descends.