USA,
2002, 101 min
Shown in 2003
CREDITS
- dir
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Alan Rudolph
- prod
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Campbell Scott, George VanBuskirk
- scr
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Craig Lucas
- cam
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Florian Ballhaus
- editor
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Andy Keir
- mus
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Gary DeMichele
- cast
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Campbell Scott, Hope Davis, Denis Leary, Robin Tunney
- source
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Manhattan Pictures International, LLC, 369 Lexington Ave., 10th Fl., New York, NY 10017. FAX: 212-453-5080. EMAIL: tcrice@manhattanpics.com
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COMMENTS
Opening Night film. Alan Rudolph and Robin Tunney in person.
OTHER
The ordinary lives of husband-and-wife dentists are jarringly ripped out of their complacent roots in this romantic fantasy of love, marriage and bad teeth, based on the acclaimed novella The Age of Grief by Jane Smiley. Doctors David and Dana Hurst (Campbell Scott and Hope Davis) have lives seemingly under as much anaesthesia as their patients, their marriage decaying more out of boredom than any violent antagonism. David soon starts suspecting Dana of having an affair, but seems resigned to her possible infidelities and all-too-real complaints. A new patient, however—the angry, frequently raving Slater (Denis Leary, of course)—won’t take such cuckolded defeatism; mocking both David’s dentistry skills and sensitive-guy nature, he even begins strangely appearing at all hours to give the befuddled, repressed husband some rather violent advice on how to really “act like a man.” Between self-pity sessions, Slater’s tough-guy ramblings and paranoid fantasies of his wife’s love affairs, David must also contend with his three sick daughters and finally decide what, if anything, to do about a marriage—and a love—that needs treatment. Powered by sly performances by Scott, Davis and the hilariously self-parodying Leary, Dentists is Alan Rudolph’s most insightful, amusing portrait yet of the fantasies and failures of seemingly ordinary lives.
FACTOID #134
The 1986 San Francisco International’s Discovering Mike Leigh was the director’s first retrospective in the U.S. According to the San Francisco Examiner, Festival Artistic Director Peter Scarlet compared the then-unknown Leigh to Yasujiro Ozu before his work had achieved international recognition; while the latter director had been considered ’too Japanese’ for global audiences, Leigh was considered ’too British.’
