A rare achievement

Rating: 10/10 (13 December 1999)

Some films touch a nerve and the feeling lasts a few days. American Beauty lingers a lifetime. Deftly mixing comedy with a bittersweet tale of mid-life confusion, director Sam Mendes and writer Alan Ball unravel the saga of Lester Burnham (a magnificent Kevin Spacey), a fed-up middle-ager who thinks he's found an American Beauty--his daughter's high-school friend. But eventually he finds the essence of real beauty. The cast shines and the delicate cinematography adds another dimension to this glowing accomplishment.