REVIEWED - THE SECRET LIVES OF DENTISTS: THREE years to the month since its world premiere at the Toronto festival, The Secret Lives of Dentists finally opens here, whereas director Alan Rudolph's two previous movies, Trixie and Investigating Sex, went directly to Irish video stores.

Based on Jane Smiley's novella The Age of Grief and adapted by Longtime Companion screenwriter Craig Lucas, today's release features Campbell Scott and Hope Davis as married dentists who spend their days working in adjoining surgery rooms at the practice they share, and their nights and weekends with their three young daughters.

Dana (Davis) seizes on the liberating opportunity to sing in the chorus with an opera company, while her more introspective husband Dave (Scott) has enough time on his hands to become obsessed with his suspicions that she's having an affair.

So far, so promising and satisfying, as Rudolph casts a quizzical eye over the couple, dissecting their decaying marriage with the precision of a dentist skilfully just avoiding a nerve, and charting the routines of their domestic lives with humour and credibility.

The movie loses its grip when Rudolph provides Dave with an alter ego to express and discuss his marital fears - a loud-mouthed, aggressive trumpet player (Denis Leary). While a more sparing use of this device just might have worked, it is employed to jarring excess. That's all the more unfortunate given the contrasting subtlety the always interesting Campbell and Davis bring to their portrayals.