The best film of 1999

Rating: 7/10 (28 December 1999)

The title says it all. Beautiful. That's what the film is about, and that's what the film is. From Wes Bentley's inspired monologue on the subject of Beauty itself, to the shot of the bag framed by the heads of the two lovers, to Lester Burnham's dream sequences of rose petals, this movie flooded me with beautiful images and ideas. A story of suburban angst and disillusionment worthy of comparison to `The Graduate', coming from the unlikeliest source (Alan Ball, screenwriter for TV's `Cybill') and sublimely acted by Bentley, Kevin Spacey, Annette Bening, Thora Birch, Mena Suvari, Chris Cooper and Allison Janney, this film sparkled with an iconoclastic yet, in the end, gentle idealism that I have not witnessed since my favorite film of last year, `Pleasantville.'