Romantic comedy and true story about how Dr. Mortimer Granville invented the world's first electromechanical vibrator in 1880 Britain as a cure for female hysteria.
Young physician Mortimer Granville (Hugh Dancy, Martha Marcy May Marlene) is too forward-thinking for the medical orthodoxy, and ends up being kicked out of hospital work. Granville finds himself in the employ of Dr. Dalrymple (Jonathan Pryce, Evita), a specialist who takes a hands-on approach to 'curing' his patients of severe hysterical symptoms such as unhappiness and boredom.
Unsurprisingly Dalrymple's proto-feminist daughter Charlotte (Maggie Gyllenhaal, Secretary) rubbishes the very idea of hysteria, along with most 19th Century ideas about women. Her free-thinking ways challenge and appeal to Granville, who's starting to wonder why he's putting such a strain on his wrist applying the therapeutical procedures. One day he makes a chance discovery thanks to budding electrical inventor Lord Edmund St. John-Smythe (Rupert Everett, My Best Friend's Wedding), and hey, presto - good vibrations.
Dancy manages a few sly moments, and Everett is as ever a scene-stealer, if barely recognizable under a beard and altered features, and with a raspy voice. But the estimable Pryce and Jones are wasted, along with many other fine thesps, while Gyllenhaal works too gratingly hard in an already strained role.
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There's nothing strictly wrong with any of this, except for the fact that even a buttoned-down period piece like 'Topsy-Turvy' feels sexier.
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The performances are spot on, and I especially like the spunky Gyllenhaal, who with this film and the underrated "Secretary" (2002), has built up a nice sideline in sexual exploration.
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Hysteria, is a pleasurable diversion, even if it could have used a touch more spark in the writing.
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Lightly humorous, well performed and not nearly as smutty as you might imagine. The earth may not move, but there are tingles of pleasure along the way.
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Though the film is a fairly plastic British period piece with all the intimacy of a Hitachi Wand, the script captures some delicate and intelligent facets of a tensely conflicted era.
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