The Secret Lives of Dentists falls into that niche of films that you wait to see on video (by which I mean DVD) and enjoy if because you're just kinda laying there on your bed and if you need to get up for a beer, you don't get arrested. This indie-flavored take on a marriage in crisis is remarkable in that it's compelling and yet not a whole lot really happens - at least in a dramatic confrontational sense. It's like Director Alan Rudolph shoots around the shouting and the ugly histrionics.

This marital meltdown transpires amid the mundane domestic and professional lives that the characters lead and it's all done with such a skewed low-key way (for example, the family doctor delivers news of a diagnosis of the psychosomatic illness of the family's eldest daughter via the phone, while sitting on the toilet reading a magazine). In a nutshell this sums up the fashion in which this surprisingly effective tale unfolds. A lot of awkward silences, pregnant sighs, tense body language, and surreptitious glances at the clock.

The subtle vicissitudes of the marriage in question between (Campbell Scott) and (Hope Davis) to introduce an element of ambivalence into David's suspicions about his wife's infidelity. And then it all gets pushed to the back burner when the family is hit with a bad case of influenza, that gradually afflicts the entire family, leading to much vomiting, and commiseration and the bitterness has to simmer beneath the aches and pains of flu symptoms.

The film is perfectly cast, I've always loved Hope Davis' detached mopiness and this distancing plays perfectly into this role of a woman hiding an affair. It's the perfect cover, because she doesn't have to change her M.O. While the underrated Campbell Scott creates an outwardly calm, collected character who allows the audience to feel the anger percolating beneath the surface.

The Secret Lives of Dentists is a very internalized movie which is actually the meaning behind the film's title - rather than the secrets that the characters keep from one another. The film we see mostly from the point of view of Scott and there are alot of amusingly banal fantasies and fevered dreams where past events turn out much better than they actually did in reality.

The fun of the movie is it's inner examination of David's inner life, his self-talk, the dialogue he maintains in his own interior world. This part of the movie rings true and offers alot of strikingly smart insight into human behavior and motivation. The party really gets started when Denis Leary enters the picture in a dual role, as a hostile dental patient named Slater, and the proverbial devil on David's shoulder (not to mention conscience, devil's advocate, and id). Leary's patented acerbic anger and frank comedic stylings offers the ideal counterpart for Scott's stoic demeanor, and the interplay between the two is great, especially since Scott strains to resist most of Leary's suggestions, but then, can't help but let things slip out.

Leary is that mean-spirited voice in your head that torments you late at night when you can't sleep because your mind is rehashing some event where you were wronged or some confrontation coming soon where you practice all the clever and biting things you're going to say. He is that angry voice which races through your mind. It's this resistance that feeds into the main marital dynamic of conflict and resentment.

The Hurst's marriage, where David was once the funster, the carefree risk taker, has completely devolved into a rather hectic domestic routine. Rudolph sets this up beautifully in the first few scenes, as David is so consumed with the couple's three children, that he seems completely oblivious to his wife's passion for the opera (the only thing she actually seems passionate about), he even acts like going to his wife's performance as something of a chore.

His almost churlish refusal to even confront her about her affair (heaven forbid the routine is broken), other than a few snide remarks muttered under his breath, seems to be almost an extension of this earlier dynamic, which probably served to only push her farther away. And the vicious cycle is perpetuated and driven deeper. Davis eventually leaves for several months, but ultimately returns preferring the predictability of her boring marriage to the affair that becomes unbearable in it's lack of reliable routine. Their reconciliation is completely perfunctory; but by this time Scott has banished the decisive voices in his head and simply informs Davis that he doesn't want to know anything about her affair. Sweeping everything under the rug where it's so much more warm and comfy.