Thora Birch is Jane, Lester and Carolyn's unhappy daughter, who can't relate or even communicate with her parents and gets caught in the crossfire of their disintegrating, loveless marriage. Director Sam Mendes takes writer Alan Ball's confrontational script to the limit of absurdity and believability without tripping up. He fuses heavily sedated dream sequences in with sharp editing, so that the contrast is so great we can feel the coldness of reality cut through the flowery tangents. The cinematography is astoundingly good. No shots are wasted.
Every frame adds to the furthering of the plot.
Mendes must be the most trusting of directors to have been able to get performances like these out of these actors. Spacey is the shining genius of the film, however. His gleeful delivery of bile-infested dialogue is unsurpassed by any of his peers. His face can mime emotions so complex most people wouldn't even be able to voice what he can do with a smirk or a rolling of his eyes. It's like eating candy watching Spacey in this role.