The Door In the Floor

Rumpled Ted Cole (Jeff Bridges) -- a successful children's author, albeit a serial boozer and philanderer -- hires a prep-school kid Eddie (Jon Foster) to be his assistant. Eddie becomes enmeshed in the Cole family troubles -- Ted's marriage to Marion (Kim Basinger) is collapsing -- and both manipulate the naïve Eddie for their own peculiar emotional ends. For his second directorial effort, Tod Williams adapted part of John Irving's novel, A Widow for One Year, and he wrings able performances from his cast and shows a welcome restraint in handling what could be showy melodrama. The film, however, belongs to Jeff Bridges, who simply inhabits the role, his aging shaggy '70s charisma perfectly tuned to the bloated, broken poseur Ted has become; his portrayal of Ted is effortless in that off-handed way Bridges has that masks so many of his great performances. Starts Fri., Aug. 6. Squirrel Hill