Dir. Alan Rudolph, 2002 , US , 104 mins
Cast: Campbell Scott, Hope Davis, Denis Leary, Robin Tunney
Rudolph’s The Secret Lives of Dentists, based on Jane Smiley’s ‘The Age of Grief’, could be subtitled ‘Anatomy of a Family’.
The dentists in question are David (Scott) and Dana (Davis), who share a dental practice, a home and children together, and also the mechanisms of everyday life together, but they seem to have forgotten how to share each other. Outwardly, they are the perfect middle-class professional family; they have their careers, which they juggle admirably around their three young daughters, they have a nice home, and their lives seem remarkably uneventful, the days turning into weeks at a nice comfortable pace. The film mimics this with one scene of ever-so-slightly manic everyday life easing gently into the next scene of ever-so-slightly manic everyday life, a small child crying here, a rush to get somewhere there – you know – life.
However, all this changes when Dana takes part in the community opera and, as he is about to visit her backstage, Dave sees her sharing a tender moment with a dark-haired man. In her costume and make-up she looks radiant, and we know she never looks like that at Dave anymore. She’s more likely to be rubbing moisturiser in to her legs or wearing dreadful floral pyjamas. Whilst Dave takes his seat in the auditorium, rapidly trying to get his head around exactly what he’s just witnessed, one of his patients – the dentist-fearing Slater (Leary) whose wife has not long left him – spots him and makes an exhibition of him by announcing to the audience that Dave is a terrible dentist. Again, no retaliation from Dave, just a quiet invite to talk to his secretary and a promise to put right any problems. If only real life was as simple.
The elegance of this film is in its restraint. As audiences we are so used to big scenes of escalating histrionics but here we see a sensitive portrait of a man who just doesn’t know what to do for the best and so he does nothing, hoping the problem will eventually go away. However, the price of that is that the little seed of (probably justified) suspicion firmly plants itself in his mind and rapidly takes on a life of it’s own. Following a second visit to the surgery from Slater, Dave finds him everywhere – Slater, the realist misogynist, becomes his niggling doubt personified, sitting in the car, in (and under) his bed, at the table, serving up fried squirrel – an imaginary friend, the voice in his head, the fears he cannot himself confront and, ultimately, his alter-ego. Leary dispenses advice in his characteristic wisecrack manner, but the wit is in the truth of his observations. Even the fact that he’s referencing Fight Club’s Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt), with his brown leather jacket and oversize shades, serves only to enhance the film, and Leary manages to stay just this side of manic in his performance. As Dave verbally wrestles with this interloper, he says he does nothing because confronting it may mean he has to do something. He wants Dana to work it through herself and, we surmise, that the situation will sort itself out.
For Dana, this is not a one-sided tale. “Do you like me? Are we friends?” She asks Dave, and sometimes at night she reaches out for him but he feigns sleep. Is there a parallel film screening somewhere in which Dana has her own imaginary friend? What we have here is two ordinary people in early middle age, ten years married, and slowly coming to terms with that this is what life is. As Dave says to Slater, all his previous struggles to get where he is “is this what it is for?” The film’s slow serenity is imbued with a golden glow, coloured with warm russets, suggesting summer’s end and the almost imperceptible transition to autumn. Like the rites-of-passage movie of adolescents moving on to the next stage in life, here is such a film for adults, the maturity reflected in their calm acceptance of things.
The denoument – one could hardly call it a climax – comes when all the family is struck down by flu in turn. Chaos reigns in the shape of vomiting children, and feverish temperatures, but it’s just an everyday crisis of family life. However, it does bring about a shift in resolve for both David and Dana. At last, the matter of the wife’s infidelity is confronted. Will she stay or go? I won’t reveal the ending but, suffice to say, this small episode in the life of a family resolves itself logically and one has a sense of leaving the characters behind, doing what they do best – getting on with life.
Jean Lynch
Discuss this film here
The Secret Lives of Dentists is released on UK Region 2 DVD on 23rd 2006 January from Tartan Video.
Special Features include:
Director & cast commentary
Sundance channel – anatomy of a scene
Gag reel
Deleted scenes
Original theatrical trailer
Film notes
Tartan trailer reel
DTS Digital Surround 5.1
Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround
Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo
www.tartanvideo.com
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