American Beauty - Your daughter's friend is never okay


Despite the fact that American Beauty is undoubtedly a great movie full of fantastic performances, it doesn't change the fact that one of the storylines involves a dad lusting after his teenage daughter's friend. When Kevin Spacey and Mena Suvari finally have their vomit-inducing love scene (which thankfully stops short of the big moment), the tenderness of Mena's vulnerability only serves to highlight how inappropriate the whole thing was from the start. But throughout the movie, Spacey's lustful fantasies about her are generally played for comedy, so when their real encounter finally happens, it's a very "Please tell us this is not happening right now" moment. The punctuation of the scene where he covers her with a blanket is such a post-traumatic gesture that most viewers are probably just relieved it's over. Plus, he gets murdered moments later.

This scene isn't any easier to watch in a post-MeToo world, where Kevin Spacey has been accused of multiple sexual improprieties, including some involving young people.

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Requiem for a Dream - Did that really just happen?

The uncomfortable scene in question here occurs at the end of Requiem for a Dream, when each of the main characters are deep in the worst chapter of addiction. We're literally witnessing their rock bottoms. Jennifer Connelly plays Marion, a heroin addict who resorts to selling her body for the drug when she is recruited into doing a "show" for a bunch of demonic, salivating men who jeer and throw money on her and another woman during the performance. It's not so much a love scene as a horrifically graphic act that occurs amid a swirling, brilliantly edited sequence that not only weaves together the awful predicaments that each character has found themselves in, but also imparts their panic and despair onto the audience through the effective, if not jarring use of shock value.
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