Sub-Lynchian

Rating: 7/10 (4 April 2004)

Sam Mendes' 'American Beauty' is a fun satire on American suburban culture, but in my opinion it hardly deserved it's Oscars. Potato-jowelled Kevin Spacey, in the lead role as a middle aged man undergoing a mid-life crisis, is very funny, his behaviour unreasonable yet appealing at the same time. But the symptoms of his crisis (lusting after his daughter's best friend, buying a fast car, etc.) are all quite unoriginal. Annette Bening plays his ambitious, shallow wife (and there's a degree of misogyny in the way the film takes Spacey's side over hers, when coupled with its portrayal of Mena Suvari's teenage bitch): the other adult characters (the repressed bigot, the cheesy salesman) are similarly cliched. Fundamentally, this is quite a shallow film, albeit one that makes you laugh.
The younger characters are, if anything, even more problematic. Mena Suvari plays Angela, the young sexpot for whom Spacey falls: her performance is poor, fluctuating wildly between tough girl front and inner vulnerability. What's interesting about real people is that we can be two things at the same time: but Angela goes from bad girl to good, and is never in between. The screenwriter also makes a common error in believing you make a character seem sexy by getting her to swear a lot; but Angela always seems forced and knowing, ironically (from the viewer's perspective) utterly failing to represent the combination of playfulness and naturalness in real teenagers which would offer an explanation for Spacey's lust. Maybe this is even intentional cowardice on the part of the film-makers - it's safer by far to make a film about a middle aged man in love with a dream, than by one really attracted to an actual (younger) girl. By making Angela so clearly symbolic, they escape the risk of getting attacked by those hyper-sensitive to portrayals of paedophilia.
Thora Birch's character, Jane, is Spacey's daughter. The film decides to largely exonerate her of responsibility in its wider farce: it mocks her mode of, like, speaking, but it caresses her more than it puts in the boot: her ludicrous desire for plastic surgery is, for example, hardly touched. Plus, as in all Hollywood movies, even the 'plain' girl in the plot is necessarily played by a beautiful actress.
Meanwhile, Wes Bentley's character is another stock part: the weird kid who turns out to be all right; but not because weirdness is OK, but rather because he's not really weird after all. He may not be weird but he is a drug dealer, though presented in a wholly positive light as if morally uncorrupted by his criminal trade. Even if one has no problems with cannabis use, it's strange that he is presented as a role model (in contrast to the suburban hypocrites) when his ability to make a fortune out of his work is obviously derived from that very hypocrisy (if drugs were legal, no-one would get rich selling them): but this film lacks the intelligence to see that he is a part of the picture (and not apart from it). Also, his interest in filming things, reminding one of numerous other movies including 'Peeping Tom' and 'Sex, Lies and Videotape', helps the plot along but is one of those devices one suspects are of more interest to film-makers than to the general public.
The film ends by giving Spacey a moment of epiphany he has done nothing to earn (if he really had found meaning in his life through quitting the rat race, that would be different but all he has actually done is played out his fantasies without yet counting the consequences). Indeed, it gets all solemn and meaningful in a long drawn out conclusion.
Overall I have been very hard on this film, which I actually enjoyed. But fundamentally it is a very compromised satire, one that mocks its characters but forgives its audience, even though the two are really the same (and when a braver film would dare to do things the other way around). Anyone can laugh at unhappy families. A real revolutionary would aim at the happy ones.