American Beauty

Description:
The film begins with an image from a video camera , showing a teenager lying on the bed. She complains about her father, says that he is boring and is ashamed of him. A voiceover from a young man, probably the one operating the camera, asks: "Do you want me to kill him?" She thinks about it for a moment and says with a smirk, "Yes...Would you?"

The film picks up with Lester Burnham ( Kevin Spacey ), a forty-two-year-old Chicago advertising executive and family man. Lester begins to play the narrator, but the Lester on the screen isn't speaking: “In less than a year, I'll be dead. Of course, I still don't know. And in a way, I'm already dead." We soon realize why: his life is not the best. His wife Carolyn ( Annette Bening ) is an ambitious real estate salesperson who cares only about career success ("My company sells an image and it's part of my job to live this image"); his daughter Jane ( Thora Birch), sixteen years old (the girl with the camera at the beginning of the film), is a typical apathetic teenager who complains about her father for his lack of support and is thinking of having breast surgery , to lift them up and leave both to themselves. the same height. Lester comments of her: “Jane is a typical teenager: angry, insecure and confused. I would like to tell her that she will get over it, but I don't want to lie to her ». Jane and Lester haven't spoken to each other for months. Lester describes himself as a loser, bored, someone easy to forget ("I've lost something, but it's never too late to get it back").


The main cast of the film. From left to right: (Top) Wes Bentley, Chris Cooper, Mena Suvari and Kevin Spacey. (Below) Annette Bening, Thora Birch and Allison Janney.
You can see a typical day in the life of each of the three characters. Lester starts his day masturbating in the shower. As he says, “This is going to be the best time of the day. Everything will go downhill from here." Lester is later seen at his job, where his boss, Brad Dupree, asks him to write a report outlining his job and his tasks, detailing exactly what his contribution is to the company. Dupree is trying to identify which employees he can get rid of so he can fire them and save the company money. Carolyn, for her part, tries to sell a house to several couples, but is met with rejection after rejection. Lester finds the inspiration to transform himself upon meeting Angela Hayes ( Mena Suvari ).), the best friend and schoolmate of his daughter Jane. Angela is a beautiful, confident and supposedly promiscuous cheerleader who aspires to be a model ., and who thinks that "there is nothing worse in life than being common." Angela captivates Lester from the moment he sees her at a routine school dance performance and develops an obsession with her, much to Jane's embarrassment. That same night, Jane sees a young man recording her with her video camera through her bedroom window. Jane, who is not used to receiving attention of this kind, is flattered. Later, when Jane invites Angela to sleep over at her house, Lester overhears Angela tell Jane that she finds her father attractive and that she would "totally make love to him" if he started working out a bit. little bit. Hearing this, Lester immediately sets off for his garage, where he finds old free weights .and start to lift them. Meanwhile, a family consisting of the extremely homophobic and austere Colonel Frank Fitts ( Chris Cooper ), a member of the United States Marine Corps , a man with no emotions and possibly depression ; his wife Barbara ( Allison Janney ); and his curious and introspective son Ricky ( Wes Bentley ), move in next door to the Burnhams. Jane begins to notice that Ricky, whom she does not know his father, makes money as a marijuana dealer .

Some time later, Carolyn begins an extramarital affair with a rival real estate salesman, and also, induced by him, decides to start relieving her stress at a shooting range . Lester quits his job, blackmails his boss with his severance pay, and starts working at a new fast food restaurant .and Ricky shows Jane a video of a plastic bag "dancing" in the air, which Rick considered the most beautiful thing he's ever recorded. Later, during a heated argument at dinner, Lester finally asserts his dominance over Carolyn at home. On the last day of his life, Lester calmly confronts his wife about his extramarital affair, causing the end of their marriage. Carolyn listens to a self - help tape that convinces her to "refuse to be a victim." She bitterly drives to her house with her gun, intending to confront her husband, believing that he has ruined her life. Lester calls Ricky at his house to get marijuana, raising the suspicions of Colonel Fitts, who is convinced that his son is gay .and maintains a relationship with Lester himself. Consequently, she forces him to leave home, after beating him violently. When Ricky and Jane plan to escape to New YorkAngela, who is visiting them, accuses them of being "weird", to which Ricky reproaches her that she is ugly, that she is ordinary and she knows it. As Rick talks to her mother, telling her that she has no choice but to leave, he says goodbye to her and asks her to take care of her father, Angela bursts into tears on the stairs and Lester comes to comfort her. But before, while he was doing physical exercises, he lifts the door of his garage to an emotionally broken Colonel Fitts, who shows up at his house completely wet in the rain. The colonel hugs him intensely and then pretends to kiss him, thus revealing his sexual condition and being rejected by Lester. Once with her, Lester and Angela get into a sexual approach, which falls apart for her when she reveals that it is, in fact, her first time. Lester can't take hisvirginity and fatherly makes her a sandwich in the kitchen instead. For the first time in a while, Lester realizes that he is truly happy. As Angela goes to the bathroom, Lester looks at an old smiling family photo of her, unaware that a gun is resting on the back of her head, behind her. A shot is heard and the camera, which focuses on the wall, shows how a sudden bloodstain is imprinted on it.

The film ends with a description of Lester's life in pictures before his eyes, interspersed with scenes of his family and others up to the time of the shot; Ricky, Angela and Jane's reactions to the shot (Ricky observes that Lester died happily), Carolyn crying just as she entered the house repentant for having wished her husband's death and Colonel Fitts returning to his house with his clothes completely bloody and a gun in hand. Looking back on these events from the narrator's point of view, Lester is pleased:

I guess I could be pretty angry about what happened to me, but it's hard to stay angry when there's so much beauty in the world. Sometimes I feel like I'm looking at it all at once and it overwhelms me. My heart swells like a balloon about to burst... but I remember to relax and not hold on to her too much, and then she flows through me like rain and I feel nothing but gratitude for every moment of my life. stupid and insignificant life... Surely you have no idea what I'm talking about, but don't worry... one day you will.»