Dave Hurst is a dentist who shares a practice with his wife, Dana, and comes home at night to their three little girls. He feels he does the lion's share of the household duties: his domestic skills are more finely honed, and the tantrum-prone youngest child doesn't like to be touched by anyone but Daddy.

Sharing both home and work space with Dana, Dave naturally assumes that she keeps no secrets from him. But she lands in the chorus of a local opera, and when he comes backstage unexpectedly he sees her, from a distance, looking with unmistakable ardor at another man. Then her chronic lateness for meals and other unexplained absences begin to add up in a new way.

The Secret Lives of Dentists is a wry, prickly portrait of a marriage in crisis, told from the point of view of the husband thrown for a loop by his wife's apparent infidelity. The movie is remarkably evenhanded, equally sympathetic to both partners.