Arts ik Life

At The Movies

The Secret Lives Of Dentists'

In a new drama, director Alan Rudolph
employs the care of teeth as a metaphor for
the maintenance of a marriage.

MICHAEL ELKIN
Jewish Exponent

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I is no secret that Alan Rudolph,
the auteur of The Secret Lives of
Dentists, opening today in
Detroit, secretes a cineaste mys-
tique, a reputation as an acquired taste
that he has earned over a career of such
movie bon mots as The Moderns,

tists or, at the other end, proctologists?
"Dentists have a low sense of self-
esteem," says the estimable director. "I
find them to be very unsociable peo-
ple."
Or as anybody who has ever had a
root canal may attest: "They are people
associated.with pain."
The film, however, has its own pleas-
urable association: Based on The Age of
Grief, the novella by Pulitzer Prize-win-
ning writer Jane Smiley, it has been
adapted by playwright/screenwriter
Craig Lucas, whose Prelude to a Kiss was
staged on Broadway before it came to
the big screen.
Dentists is more a probe of the prob-
lems and delights of making a marriage
work, where daily checkups are de
rigueur and dentistry just the filler.
"It's about the looks, the smells and

Afterglow, Mrs. Parker and the Vicious
Circle and Welcome to L.A.
If he hasn't exactly been welcomed by
L.A.'s mainstream movie makers,
Rudolph has encountered an eclectic
and enthusiastic audience nationwide
for his films, based not on any interest
"in the abnormal," because, as he has
said, "the normal is so much more com-
plicated."
Certainly, what could be more mun-
dane than the
molar mentality of
his current movie
protagonist,
played by
Campbell Scott
(son of the late
actors George C.
Scott and third
wife Colleen
Dewhurst).
But scratch
below the porce-
lain and discover a
dentist whose
marriage is
Director Alan Rudolph: 71- M fascinated by artifice, the surface
cracked and
of people. All I want is to connect to what makes people feel."
cratered, creating a
cavity so deep no
amount of floss could fill its void.
the daily grind of being married," says
"I told my dentist what the film is
Rudolph, as we watch his characters
about," says Rudolph over sugarless bev- "eat, get sick, throw up and get better."
erages in Philadelphia, "and he never
And what better to have in a marriage
spoke to me aOin."
than a good sense of humor? Indeed,
What the film speaks to, outside the
that sense provides not so much a cure
importance of having a good dental
as an anesthetic to hard times, as evi-
plan, is the need to map a marriage as if denced in the film.
on a battlefield. Only here, on screen,
Rudolph makes no secret of his own
the war games are played out amid the
thoughts on marriage: "I am so happily
magic realism of obsessive dreams and
married, I feel like we're still dating," he
abscessed gums.
says of the 20 year union he shares with
As with his other films, Rudolph here his wife. Plain and simple, "I'm mad
is on the cusp of innovation, using actor about her," he says.
Denis Leary as a Greek chorus — albeit
What Rudolph clearly is not as
one with a nagging toothache.
thrilled about is doing projects he hasn't
But why dentists? Why not orthodon-
initiated.

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