May. 30, 2012 - Issue #867: Nextfest 2012

Hysteria

Given its ostensibly titillating, ostensibly feminist subject matter, you may have heard a certain buzz around Hysteria, the new film, directed by Tanya Wexler, that chronicles the birth of a certain beloved piece of machinery that has ministered many a horny human toward sexual completion, whether alone or in sympathetic company. But the vibrations emanating from this facile, half-farcical period exercise in patting viewers on the back for being more enlightened than the average Victorian tight-ass are not the good kind. The novelty of the premise and the accompanying tired plot mechanics wear off faster than the glow of a purely utilitarian, too-hurried self-serve orgasm, and the Merchant-Ivory meets Benny Hill humour is limper than a dirty sock.

The film, scripted by Stephen Dyer and Jonah Lisa Dyer, is loosely based on the true story of one Mortimer Granville, played here by Hugh Dancy. Granville was a doctor and an idealist who lands a gig helping a fellow physician perform vulvar massages on patients suffering from hysteria. Apparently it was presumed that an overactive uterus was the most common cause of that demeaning and widely diagnosed (to women almost exclusively) malady that plagued London back in the day. The big repeated gag is that these guys somehow don't understand that they're essentially handing out handjobs to sexually frustrated society ladies, not even when these ladies are furiously writhing and moaning as they reach "satisfactory paroxysm." Ha ha.

Meanwhile, there's Charlotte (Maggie Gyllenhaal), a suffragette who works with the city's downtrodden. Charlotte and Mortimer initially get off on the wrong foot, which means we'll have to wait a while for the movie to force them into each other's orbit of endearment as it awkwardly applies a few screwball tropes. But the romance is just the sideshow to the main attraction: the rise of the vibrator, something that may never have occurred if Mortimer and his finger-popping colleagues didn't suffer such debilitating hand cramps. By the finale even Queen Victoria gets her kicks courtesy of the little love machine. A pretty lame movie, but it certainly has a happy ending.

Opens Friday
Directed by Tanya Wexler vueweekly.com comments: powered by Disqus