The terrible irony in the title of this difficult, painful film about dashed American dreams and obsessive desires strikes one with full force only as one leaves the theater, in stunned silence.

American Beauty is a film that compacts into a little more than two hours all that is sick and destructive in worst-case American society and all that is dysfunctional in a worst-case American family.

We are battered with slices of life that include a marital relationship that ranges from horrible ennui to flagrant, angry infidelity to an undefined but toxic emotion that vacillates between cold indifference and deep-seated hatred.

Whatever healthy teen involvement we witness in sports, dancing and music is overshadowed by the teen involvement in (implied) excessive sex and drugs.

Are these, indeed, the depths to which suburbia has plunged? And who or what is the "American Beauty" anyway?

Is it the lush, blonde voluptuousness of Mena Suvari as Angela Hayes? The autumn-kissed, plush neighborhoods of well off America? The sparkle of wife Carolyn (Annette Bening), whose somewhat comical interpretation of an attractive, high powered businesswoman is intruded upon by her biting, bitter, desperate edge?

Or is it the thoughtful, moving relationship that develops between Jane (Thora Birch) and Ricky (Wes Bentley, a newcomer to the real film world and to the fictional neighborhood) as two teenagers who are on the fringes and find love and meaning with each other?

There are other firsts in American Beauty. In addition to the introduction of Bentley, it is the first produced screenplay by the immensely talented Alan Ball. It is also the first film project directed by Sam Mendes, a British theater director. The influence of theater is laced throughout the drama which, like a fine painting, relies as much on the "white", silent spaces as it does on the powerful verbal statements and occasional hysterical scenes. Like the outside observer he is, Mendes fingers the soft underbelly of American family life.

He is helped in this effort by Lester Burnham (Kevin Spacey) as the frustrated, burnt-out father/husband who knows, somehow, that there has to be more to life.

Yet an optimist might say that, despite the ugliness, this is a film about penitence and resolution. Carolyn gets the scoop (too late), Angela reveals (in the nick of time), finally, an age-appropriate reaction to sex, Lester achieves Awareness. And the young couple - they take off for the streets of New York, whose emotional, moral scenery could not possibly be any worse than the streets of their local scene.

Cause for hope? Ah, but the violence, drugs and distress do not disappear, even at the end. It may be a beginning, but there is still a long, long, long way to go.

Perhaps too long to make the destination reachable. At least in this film.

Or in this century.

If ever there was, to borrow a phrase coined by Sara Eisen, WholeFamily's Teen Editor, a "question to all the answers", American Beauty is it.

It is all the questions to all the answers we try to give here, at WholeFamily.com, about why a healthy family life is like a precious jewel, to be coveted and, if achieved, polished and treasured forever.

Or, to switch metaphors, family life is a growing, breathing organism, like a rose garden, to be appreciated, nurtured and watered.

Lester Burnham fantasizes about Angela among the rose petals. To make a real rose garden (or a real family life) grow, fantasizing is not enough.