American Beauty

* * * *

Cast: Kevin Spacey, Annette Bening, Chris Cooper

Director: Sam Mendes

Rating: R16 (sex, violence, language, drugs)

Running Time: 122 mins

Opens: Weekend previews at Village Cinemas, opens Thursday.

Review: Peter Calder


Lester Burnham is dead when we meet him. He tells us so in a toneless voiceover as an aerial camera slowly narrows in on his suburban neighbourhood. "This is my street, this is my life," he says. "I'm 42 years old. In less than a year, I'll be dead. Of course, I don't know that yet. In a way, I'm dead already."

Lester (Spacey) is dying slowly as his mid-life crisis ripens in a dead-end job as a journalist for an advertising trade magazine. Meanwhile, his brittle, neurotic wife, a real estate agent obsessed with a rival's success, prunes her perfect roses with secateurs which match her shoes ("that's not an accident," Lester observes deadpan) and his relationship with his teenage daughter is paralysed by her sullen truculence which he at once loathes and shares ("I wish I could tell her that's all going to pass, but I don't want to lie to her").

Lester's epiphany arrives the instant he lays eyes on his daughter's cheerleading teammate (Suvari), a knowing nymphet. But this is no Lolita rerun; Lester's lust - at once discomforting and ridiculous - may trigger what follows but his passions run deeper.

Scraping at the edges of the hole behind the American dream is scarcely new subject matter. There are echoes of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman here and movies as different as The Graduate and The Ice Storm.

But if the theme is familiar, the approach is distinctive and original and rich in marvellous ambiguity. Unusually for an American studio movie (the film is a production of Spielberg's DreamWorks conglomerate) American Beauty shuns narrative predictability and tidy endings.

The beauty of Beauty - and what makes it so engagingly subversive - is that its characters tread the fine line between self-parody and aching sincerity. Lester's scintillating glibness takes our breath away and we laugh in shock, but the laughter is more savoury than sweet.

The film's freshness may, in large part, be down to the fact that Mendes (who directed the naked Nicole Kidman in The Blue Room on both sides of the Atlantic) and screenwriter Alan Ball (a TV veteran whose credits include Cybill and Grace Under Fire) are both making their feature film debuts.

Some moments are undeniably jarring. When Lester rants to his wife about her obsessive materialism we feel patronised; Cooper (the indefatigable sheriff of John Sayles' Lone Star) rather chews up a role as the Burnhams' neighbour, a homophobic retired Marine colonel; and the cause of Lester's climactic death, while unexpected, is somewhat hokey.

But the film, which features a terrific soundtrack by Thomas Newman and the fluid cinematography of Conrad Hall, is sustained by its wonderful ensemble, particularly Spacey's measured and self-effacing performance. A man who's made his name playing villains, he displays here an economy of expression worthy of Gene Hackman or Anthony Hopkins.

American Beauty took the top three honours (for best picture, director and screenplay) at the Golden Globes which are traditionally highly predictive of March's Oscar results. Unlike many - if not most - Oscar favourites, this is also a film of substance.