Kate Gompert on the psych ward — "And she gave him back a…"
And she gave him back a frightening smile, a smile empty of all affect, as if someone had contracted her circumorals with a thigmotactic electrode. The teeth of the smile evidenced a clinical depressive’s classic inattention to oral hygiene.
Context
The frightening smile: facial affect produced mechanically, a smile with nothing behind it — the scene's most concentrated image of anhedonic masking, clinical diction doing the horror. It feeds the forced-smiles ledger (Mario's daily smile, Joelle's mask-of-acceptance) from the depressive side.