Hollywood Release: Hysteria [Watch Trailer]

Hysteria is set in the 1880s which starts with Dr. Mortimer Granville shown as a recently unemployed doctor.  He eventually gets a job with Dr. Robert Dalrymple, London’s “foremost specialist in women’s medicine”.  As an expert in ‘hysteria,’ Dr. Dalrymple is besieged by an alarming epidemic of women suffering emotional afflictions.  Luckily, Dr. Dalrymple’s ‘manual massage’ cure is shockingly effective.  Of course it is.  He takes on Dr. Granville as “there are not enough hands to do the work.”  So when the handsome young doctor joins the practice, women are queuing around the block for his services.  Well, if the doctor looks like that, I’d be on that line in a heartbeat.  With his success, he soon gets engaged to Dr. Dalrymple’s daughter, the perfect and beautiful Emily Dalrymple while his other daughter, Charlotte strongly disapproves of their method and who accuses both her father and the young doctor of being “quacks.”

Dr. Granville’s success comes at a cost, he finds himself dealing with extreme hand cramps.  He loses his physician’s touch and can no longer satisfy his patients.  As a result, he yet again loses his job and with it, his fiancée.  With nowhere else to go, he turns to his lifelong friend the forward-thinking Edmund St. John-Smythe who is obsessed with the ‘new’ science of electricity.  Edmund unveils his plans for the new electric-powered feather duster and it gives the doctor a compelling idea—the result will revitalize his medical practice, thrill his patients and upend his heart.  As the same time, Charlotte begins to teach him more about how women really work—and what they actually want—than he ever bargained for.  The result is a witty, winning comedy that not only reveals how the vibrator became one of the first electrical appliances in history to earn a patent—but also, sends sparks flying between a cautious man and a liberated woman brought together by the wonders of friction.

This British film is directed by Tanya Wexler and it stars academy award winner Maggie Gyllenhaal, Hugh Dancy, Rupert Everett and Felicity Jones.

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