Director: Tod Williams
Year Released: 2004
Rating: 1.0
In the most convenient of set-ups, a young Exeter student goes to help out a writer of children's books (Jeff Bridges) whose marriage is falling apart. After only a few days there, he immediately settles in, getting to the point where he tries masturbating out in the open (or without locking the door - what an idiot) before getting caught by Bridges' comatose wife, played by Kim Basinger, who shows him the sexual ropes in a fit of spiritual incest (the young man is a stand in for her dead young son). Veers between deep drama and hilarity - one example of a subplot not fitting at all with the mood of the picture is the Bridges-Mimi Rogers section - and feeling desperate with some of its calculated awkward moments (Bridges walking around naked, the young man and Basinger caught having sex by the little girl, Bridges driving in a car with strangers only for a pencil drawing of Mimi Rogers' vagina to fly onto the windshield). The point is that the married couple is supposed to be in the process of healing after their sons died, and that the budding writer is supposed to learn more about writing and being a man, but the question at the end is: does anyone actually change?
