Hysteria
Tanya Wexler
The story: In strait-laced late 19th-century Victorian England, hysteria is a supposed medical condition afflicting half the women. The young and idealistic Dr Mortimer Granville (Hugh Dancy) gets a job which essentially requires him to give women massages to provide sexual relief. Meanwhile, he finds himself drawn to his employer’s daughters, gentle Emily (Felicity Jones) and firebrand Charlotte (Maggie Gyllenhaal). Along the way, the vibrator is born.

There must have been a lot of sexually frustrated women in Victorian England. The societal strictures and mores of the time would be more suffocating than a tightly drawn corset.
Then again, the concept of sexual frustration did not even exist. Instead, a whole host of symptoms and vague complaints were tagged with the label of hysteria.
The audience is quickly given a sense of the state of science and medicine when a senior physician dismisses germ theory as “poppycock” and leeches are routinely used to suck blood from patients in the misguided belief that this would cure them.
Enter the idealistic Dr Granville who puts his faith in science and simply wants to help people. He is such a decent chap, he even refuses to take money from his rich eccentric friend (Rupert Everett).
Looking like he stepped out from the pages of a Jane Austen novel, Hugh Dancy is perfectly cast as Dr Granville.
With his pleasant features and earnest demeanour, he is like a less stuttery but still charming version of Hugh Grant.
Dancy – incidentally the star of romantic drama The Jane Austen Book Club (2007) – keeps the character likeable even when he is shown up to be rather conservative and stodgy after all by the firebrand that is Charlotte Dalrymple.
As Charlotte, Maggie Gyllenhaal’s eyes are bright with hope and conviction as she agitates for a more equal society. It is clear that the two are attracted to each other even though Dr Granville is initially drawn to the more ladylike and genteel younger sister Emily.
Without quite realising it, he ends up playing a part in the revolution as well, nudging sexual equality along by coming up with the vibrator. The joke is that he initially conceives of it in order to give his tired hands a rest from massaging so many women.
Director Tanya Wexler handles the material here with a light touch and finds the humour in the absurdity of the situation: Perfectly proper women flock to the doctor and everyone is in denial about the fact that the women are essentially receiving sexual favours from the dishy young doctor.
And instead of feeling smutty, the feel-good scenes of a variety of women achieving pleasure are gently amusing.
In its good-natured celebration of female sexuality, Hysteria brings to mind John Cameron Mitchell’s outlandish but sweet Shortbus (2006).
Watch the end credits to learn about the amusing nicknames the vibrator has had over the years, from the squealer to the sorcerer’s apprentice.
(ST)