The spectre waiting

Four model houses; four less than model families. The opening credits of Rose Troche's movie are, in some ways, its most impressive element. Based on a series of short stories by AM Homes it is American Beauty Lite, a suburban portmanteau movie masquerading as a coherent ensemble piece.

Having introduced the principals with fluid economy, Troche struggles to maintain the momentum of the MacGuffin that links them all. Individually, however, their stories are subtly portrayed.

Esther Gold (Glenn Close) nurses her son Paul (Joshua Jackson), who lies in a coma; her dutiful attentions have alienated both her husband (Robert Klein) and her sullen teenage daughter Julie (Jessica Campbell). A block away, Annette Jennings (Patricia Clarkson) is a struggling single-parent mother whose husband has recently traded her in for a younger model.

Across the way, lawyer Jim Train (Dermot Mulroney) is undergoing some kind of crisis, precipitated by his failure to gain a partnership at work and his family's increasing distance. Moving easily between past and present, the film lays a trail of clues to the events that led up to Paul's condition and the involvement of the assembled characters.

Unlike other movies about dysfunctional families (The Royal Tenenbaums, Happiness, Ordinary People), this one suggests that a single catalytic event lies at the heart of the community's problems and its shock waves continue to disrupt their lives.

"There's a certain security knowing that the worst has happened," remarks Esther, and the import of her words lingers like a spectre as the film unfolds. There is a fine balance between the pathos of the characters' situations and the potential tragedy waiting in the wings. Troche's triumph is to deliver the consequences laterally; little of what occurs is predictable, yet much of it is inevitable.

For example, the potential horror of the "kidnap" of Annette's daughter Sam (Kristen Stewart) by the local pool cleaner, Randy (Timothy Olyphant), is subtly leavened by the gradual realisation that it is not what it first seemed.

It is a difficult trick to juxtapose the winsome eccentricity of fractured suburban lives with the darker facets of the curdled American Dream of materialism, and Troche doesn't quite pull it off.

For a better example of a similarly conflicted tale I would recommend John Duigan's Lawn Dogs, which toyed with corrupted surburban lives and childhood innocence with an assurance and audacity lacking here. Nevertheless, Troche - with the aid of a thoroughly brilliant cast - has coaxed an intriguing, multilevelled drama out of several literary sources.

The Safety Of Objects
Cert: cert15