There’s really only one joke in “Hysteria,” a period comedy on a delicate subject. That joke is amusing, and the cast is first-rate, so the movie just gets a pass.
In 1880s London, a progressive young doctor named Mortimer Granville (played by Hugh Dancy, from “Martha Marcy May Marlene”) finds work as an assistant to Dr. Dalrymple (Jonathan Pryce), a man with a cushy practice and a long line of female patients.
Seems Dr. Dalrymple treats “hysteria,” a common diagnosis for unfulfilled women of the time. His sessions consist of — oh, how are we going to describe this. Let’s just say that Dr. Dalrymple induces what he calls a “paroxysm” in his patients by bringing them to a heightened state in his office — under strict medical procedures, of course.
This eventually leads the storyline to the invention of the electric vibrator. I would like to add that this film is a romantic comedy, which might not be immediately evident.
The very earnest Mortimer becomes involved with Dr. Dalrymple’s very proper daughter (Felicity Jones), although it is clear to every audience member that he is destined to be entranced by her feisty suffragette of an older sister, Charlotte (Maggie Gyllenhaal).
This might be a totally stock situation were it not for the spirited performance by Maggie Gyllenhaal, who slides into an English accent (by the sound of it, borrowed from Emma Thompson) with the same ease she slips into a corset.
Gyllenhaal is delightfully “on” through the entire movie, which gives it life it might otherwise have lacked.
A few laughs are summoned up by Mortimer’s inventor friend, played by Rupert Everett in enjoyably broad strokes. There’s room for that kind of burlesque; this isn’t a straight-faced approach, but a looser kind of comedy.
If it sometimes feels as though an episode of “Downton Abbey” has turned into a Monty Python sketch, that’s probably all right. (Actually, some of “Downton Abbey” already feels like that.) Absolutely everything in “Hysteria” is easy to predict, and the social satire is soft but constant; this is a lightweight movie with a playful agenda.
The director is Tanya Wexler, who happens to be the niece of the Oscar-winning cinematographer Haskell Wexler. Although there really was a Dr. Granville who patented a vibrator, we can assume that Wexler and her team had a little fun with the idea, which results in a pleasant movie, if not hysterical.
“Hysteria”
A lightweight romantic comedy that also happens to be about the invention of the vibrator — patented by an English doctor (played by Hugh Dancy) in the 1880s. The film is absolutely predictable at every turn, though amusing in its one-joke way — and Maggie Gyllenhaal is a delight as a headstrong suffragette.
Rated: R for subject matter.
Showing: Harvard Exit
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