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By *ap Adge OP Man
over a year ago
Wirral |
a pseudo British rom-com about the invention of the vibrator probably sounds like a dicey proposition. But I was pleasantly surprised by Hysteria, an amusing riff on the genesis of this particular household appliance that smartly ties in a wider perspective on the emergence of woman’s rights in the Victorian era without getting too, uh, sticky.
Admittedly, it’s a story told through the eyes of a man, one Dr Mortimer Granville (Hugh Dancy), whose character seems to be only loosely based on the actual historical personage. In this version he’s an earnest young medic whose progressive leanings are mostly channeled into a faith in science and technology. His impatience with his older, more conservative colleagues soon sees his career prospects dwindling to the point where he is lucky to be accepted as the assistant to Dr Robert Dalrymple (Jonathan Pryce), who is keen to groom the young man as his likely son in law.
Dalrymple’s consulting room is doing a roaring trade, and no wonder. He specializes in women’s nervous disorders, or “hysteria”, which he treats by massaging them between the legs. Apparently this revolutionary procedure is generating remarkable results: patients leave relieved and relaxed, even if they’re jolly keen on repeat visits. Dalrymple can barely keep up with demand, and his new right hand man is also soon at risk from RSI.
That’s all good fun to be sure (director Tanya Wexler is pretty discreet), but the movie finds its plot in the screwball love-hate relationship between Mortimer and Dalrymple’s other daughter, Charlotte (Maggie Gyllenhaal). Where his intended, Emily (Felicity Jones) is demure as a daisy, compliant and well mannered, Charlotte is the black sheep of the family, a suffragette with a tart tongue who dedicates her life to the poor.
Mortimer is both attracted to and appalled by this strange creature, a new breed of woman-kind, as exciting as she is infuriating. The spunky Gyllenhaal is appropriately cast, though I would suggest she seems too unselfconsciously modern in her comportment, her mind is always made up, and while the suffragettes were evidently women of strong conviction, I would imagine that they struggled with those principles and the cost they exacted.
But Hugh Dancy brings considerable comic expertise to his role (I’m still processing the news that he’s playing Will Graham in the TV series Hannibal, opposite Mads Mikkelsen’s Lecter!), and Rupert Everett is very droll as his homosexual friend, Edmund St John-Symthe, whose tinerking eventually leads to the world’s first “electric feather duster”.  |
