American Beauty director Sam Mendes (a stage director working on his first movie) makes deliberate choices in the way the red is used in the film. It’s the color of: the roses that Carolyn Burnham (Annette Benning) snips in her first scene; the car in the background when Col. Fitts (Chris Cooper) violently kisses Lester Burnham (Kevin Spacey); and the rose petals that appear in Lester’s frequent fantasies about his teenage daughter’s friend Angela (Mena Suvari).
The bath scene works because mostly because it acknowledges the conventions of dream sequences while adding the subtextual element of the rose petals—and ends with the hilarious look of disgust when Carolyn discovers her husband pleasuring himself.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPJE21U518M]