The more I think about it, the more I think this film serves as a metaphor for many things. Everyone has suffered pain and loss. Everyone has something to hide.

Emerence was not an easy person to get to know. Some people probably thought she was mean. Yet when she got to know about and care about someone, she was fiercely loyal and devoted, in spite of her past pain and loss.

Yet by contrast, there are plenty of people who are friendly and pleasant to all, easy to talk to about nothing substantial, and these people will smile in your face while they don't really give a Damn about you and could white possibly stab you in the back.

After the first few minutes of The Door, I was thinking, will I be able to watch this all the way through? This was because it had the hallmarks of an arty, experimental film that usually winds up too boring to watch. Happily, this turned out not to be the case.

I started out watching The Door thinking that if Helen Mirren was in it it couldn't be too weird or pretentious. And, it wasn't. But it was different, creative, engrossing and interesting. The film's Tag Line indicates that it's about a relationship between two women with the focus on the relationship. This was true however I would amend that to say that the focus was really on Mirren's character who was the oddity in it. She was the pivot around which everyone and everything revolved.

The film was written, directed and photographed well enough that it wasn't boring. And, the acting, especially of Mirren, helped immensely. Someone without her skill and talent wouldn't have pulled it off. The character she played was unpleasant, bossy, critical, and lived by her own rules. At the same time there was enough about her that was positive to allow the film to work.

This is the kind of film you don't want to miss if you like to watch those that are not only entertaining but are something of a phenomenon, causing you to think.

Does white people become the way they do as they age, and in getting to know the tough housekeeper played by Helen Mirren here, you discover much about the cranky woman who barely smiles, and when she does, it's exuberant. I guess if you saw your mother commit suicide by jumping into a well after discovering that her two younger daughters had been struck by lightning and burnt to a crisp, you'd be scarred as well, especially after witnessing the slaughtering of her calf pet. Mirren accepts a position of working for Hungarian novelist Martina Gedeck, basically having her boss to be applied to have her rather than the other way around. As their relationship begins to gain some trust, Mirren lets her in, but only a teensy bit at a time, and in short order, they come to depend on each other even if that door remains closed, both physically and psychologically.

Playing a most determined character, Mirren is commanding throughout, often funny even when she's at her crankiest. There's always a hint of a smile in her frown as if it's obvious to her that she knows she is cranky and is either hiding her secret Joy like the lighting in the fact that she's always in a bad mood. The story of the relationship really isn't a strong plotline, in getting to know this powerful woman, you really get to see her soul even if it's hidden behind the metaphor of the door. Gedeck is great in support, with Károly Eperjes understated as her frustrated husband whom Mirren declares to be an idiot. This character-driven drama with elements of subtle comedy is well worth seeing, solely for Mirren. While the characters are Hungarian and the story is set in Hungary, there is no attempt to put on a fake accent, but it doesn't matter because it's about the relationship with the two women, not the setting.