The Door In The Floor

(Herald rating: * *)

A dreary, interminable and conspicuously unaffecting drama of guilt and grief, this adaptation of John Irving's novel A Widow For One Year is faintly interesting only as a chance to compare and contrast the work of two stars, one of whom (Bridges) can act and one of whom (Basinger) can't.

Bridges is in fine form as Ted Cole, a writer of children's books which - if the excerpts we hear are any guide - are works of excruciating banality but which have earned him fame and fortune. But his marriage to the lustrous Marion (Basinger) is in meltdown because of the death, four years earlier, of their teenage sons.

Into this emotional cesspool wades Eddie (Foster), an enthusiastic writing student who has come to work as Ted's intern on the couple's handsome Long Island spread. Pretty soon he's taking more interest in the writer's wife than in the writer. Things fall apart.

The real reason for Eddie's appointment doesn't emerge until the final act and to say it is slightly sick is to understate the case. But it rhymes perfectly with the faintly sordid tone of the whole picture. These are people at once self-absorbed and uninteresting, a fatal combination in films about affairs of the human heart.

Bridges struggles manfully with the material. He's an actor I love because he always hints at so much more than he shows. Like Harvey Keitel, he creates a sense that anything could happen and he makes Ted likeable even though he's bitter, manipulative, cynical and callous.

Basinger, by contrast, undulates through the frame with such self-conscious sensuousness that she seems to be shot in shampoo-commercial slow-motion even when she's moving at normal speed.

The film, which is reportedly adapted from just the first third of Irving's novel, develops a promising, if well-worn, idea. But with exchanges between wife and intern such as, "I want to know more about you ... " "You know too much already", it's quite a painful experience.

In the final shot I couldn't help sympathising with Bridges. As I watched, I was wishing I had an escape hatch, too.

CAST: Jeff Bridges, Kim Basinger

DIRECTOR: Tod Williams

RUNNING TIME: 111 minutes

RATING: R16

SCREENING: Rialto