HYSTERIA (R)
Where: On general release from July 12
VICTORIAN London was a stuffy old place smothered by strict social propriety, a rigid class system and, of course, the suppression of women’s rights. It’s a rather odd fact indeed that the much-loved woman’s friend, the vibrator, has its unlikely origins in this prudish time.
Tanya Wexler’s high-spirited recreation of the handy little home help’s birth casts the dashingly handsome Hugh Dancy as physician Mortimer Granville. Frustrated by a casual disregard for the advances of science, and germ theory in particular, Mortimer is fired from a series of hospitals before being taken in by Dr Robert Dalrymple (Jonathan Pryce having a jolly old time).
Pryce is a proponent of “pelvic stimulation” as treatment for the “hysteria” of the title, a rather vile catch-all term for any manner of ailment afflicting women, including depression, insomnia, anxiety and common boredom. Taking Granville into his practice, and his home, with a view to marrying him off to his impeccable daughter Emily, played cutely by Felicity Jones, Granville excels at inducing “paroxysms”. Orgasm goes unspoken, though clearly enjoyed by his appreciative, well-to-do female clientele, until his wrist starts to let him down.
Thankfully his best friend, well-heeled rake Edmund St John-Smythe, played with wicked comic timing by a scene-stealing Rupert Everett, is something of an early tech geek obsessed with electricity.
Not only does he have possibly the world’s first phone sex, and there are several hilarious nods towards the future of mobile telecommunication, but he also invents a handy electric duster inspiring Granville’s idea for a convenient pelvic massage aid. Tested on former prostitute Molly (a cheeky Sheridan Smith), now Dalrymple’s maid, it’s an obvious winner.
Burning underneath is the real story, that of the Victorian era’s treatment of both women and its poor, as championed by a gloriously feisty Maggie Gyllenhaal as Dalrymple’s less accommodating daughter Charlotte, a firecracker who constantly bucks the system.
Hysteria is lush, with oodles of heart, and if stars were allotted by the amount of snorts I elicited, there wouldn’t be enough room on the page.
