Satire is best when it has bite. This deserved winner of multiple Golden Globes (and tipped for a clutch of Oscars in 2000), bites deep. It also has class acts in Annette Bening and Kevin Spacey, stuck in another dysfunctional middle class marriage. Spacey is at his lugubrious best as Lester Burnham, who feeling smothered by a monotonous job, a henpecking wife and daughter who he hardly knows - spectacularly jacks in his career and embarks on a second teenage.

Annette Bening, a real estate agent, is uptight enough as it is. But when her husband decides to downshift to flipping burgers, blows a pile of his redundancy money on a ridiculously laddish sports car and lounges about the house smoking grass, the pressure cooker seems close to exploding.

Added to this equation, Lester has a wild obsession for one of his daughter's best friends a cheerleading, blonde "american beauty" - who is only too aware - and pleased - that Lester is salivating after her. This situation gives scope for some gorgeous, erotic fantasy sequences as Lester's imagination soars on thoughts of her nubile young physique. It also encourages him to work out, jog and generally get in shape.

Meanwhile, his daughter, Jane, is developing a friendship with the boy, Ricky, next door, a voyeuristic loner with an anally retentive ex-marine father. Ricky spends much of his time secretly filming the neighbours. You're never quite sure which household is more odd.

Alan Ball's script taps into the heart of the modern suburban malaise of boredom and disconnectedness, laced with pitch black humour. Considering this is his first feature, Sam Mendes direction is supremely confident and mature. The characters though flawed, remain sympathetic and real. One to look out for.