Spacey recently appeared on Broadway in The Iceman Cometh as Hickey, the destroyer of illusions; here director Sam Mendes and screenwriter Alan Ball have taken on that role themselves. They lampoon an America throttled by the pressure to acquire, to put on a happy face, and to win, and they've given every character symbolic weight. That's where the mixed feelings come in.

Working with the excellent cinematographer Conrad Hall, Mendes, an acclaimed theater director, has made one of the most visually accomplished debut films in memory. His thematic use of lighting and color is spectacular. Like Godard in Contempt, he links a bloodless red with rampant consumerism, but when Lester sees his daughter's cheerleader friend bathed in rose petals, the red explodes into lurid, unattainable Technicolor. In effects like these, Mendes is audacious enough to remind you that Orson Welles and Bob Fosse started out in theater too.

Like Fosse, however, who receives a tip of the Sally Bowles derby in a dazzling cheerleading production number, Mendes can't resist wallowing in male self-pity. Lester gets a lot more sympathy from the director than his wife Carolyn (Annette Bening), a shrill, frigid self-help casualty whose obsession with appearances (the movie's leitmotif) is blamed for the collapse of their marriage. This could be explained away as Lester's twisted view, except the movie keeps revealing information Lester wouldn't know, like the relationship between his daughter (Thora Birch) and the seemingly morbid neighbor kid (Wes Bentley) who deals drugs and seeks beauty on black-and-white video.

These two teens' symbolic function--as an antidote to the misery, repressive brutality, and corruption of the adult world around them--is one of the subtle ways the movie flatters a young audience. There's precious little subtle, though, about the way Ball and Mendes fit the other characters into their social-problem roles. With Chris Cooper's abusive ex-Marine, their technique is to combine one dimension of villainy with one dimension of victimization, which doesn't add up to three dimensions.

You can also argue that American Beauty exploits a lot of the problems it condemns: The movie rightfully skewers the pressure on teenage girls to satisfy adult fetishes of budding sexuality and body image, and yet it still manages to show both Birch and Suvari topless. Leaving these issues aside, though, the film is a stunning display of cinematic technique and ambition--qualities in short supply at your local megaplex. And above all it has Kevin Spacey, whose performance alone makes the movie a must-see. When he hears that his daughter's in love, Lester's small but unsuppressable delight is a transcendent moment. In a movie filled with examples of fake beauty, Spacey's the real thing.