AllMovie

Writer/director Tod Williams emerged as a creative force in the early 2000s, and developed and honed a reputation for intelligent, multidimensional, character-driven scripts that spanned a number of genres. The son of a famous architect, Williams took his premier cinematic bow with the 1998 period picture The Adventures of Sebastian Cole -- a seriocomedy about a young man (Adrian Grenier) grappling with an extremely dysfunctional family and an eccentric stepfather who has recently revealed himself to be a transsexual. Williams adapted his follow up, the psychological drama The Door in the Floor (2004) from the first portion of the novel A Widow for One Year by John Irving, after Irving reportedly gave him the adaptation rights without cost. Starring Jeff Bridges and Kim Basinger, Door concerns a family caught in the throes of psychological crisis (and infidelity) after the parents lose their two sons in a devastating automobile accident. That film took its stateside bow to enthusiastic reviews in the summer of 2004.