American Beauty

Lester, a disaffected suburban father, becomes fixated on his teenage daughter's friend and begins to dismantle the life he has built, quitting his job and reaching after a lost sense of aliveness. Around him his wife and daughter pursue their own escapes as the family unravels.

Beneath the manicured surface the film works through midlife collapse, the return of repressed desire, the gaze and, finally, the death drive. It offers a clinician a portrait of denial and longing inside a comfortable family that cannot hold. It won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 2000.