Hysteria (2012)

“Hysteria” is a mostly daring, often hilarious satire, more commentary on history, than actual deed-for-deed, word-for-word history. In 1880s London, the city’s poor are loathed and considered trash by the rich. To help or mingle with them is status quo cultural sin. Women, damn. Women are thought to suffer from hysterical delusions, and if they speak out too loudly, demand change, and a right to their own (gasp!) body, then they face institutionalization. 

More than a handful of good ol’ U.S. Republicans will recognize these traits as the glory days of all humanity. The Romney-Ryan ticket approves, certainly. (Add in blatant hatred of homosexuals.) Indeed, “Hysteria” shows a time best forgotten. Or satirized. Not re-lived.

The big tongue-in-cheek focus lays on the invention of the portable electric massager that gave any woman a right to her own pleasure. We follow a young doctor (Hugh Dancy) who is vile enough to not only wish to help the poor, but recognize the science of germs, who is tossed from job after job for his beliefs. 

So, he bounces into the employ of a physician (Jonathan Pryce) who treats hysteria, the catch-all phrase for the female symptoms I described above, you know, dissatisfaction. Here the film turns riotously funny because the “treatment” at this time means literally having a doctor manually massage a female client to climax, for her to be relived of “unwanted” thought. Hilariously, the endless workload distresses Dancy’s Mortimer Granville to near disability, or what we call carpal tunnel syndrome. More hilariously: Watch how the older female clients of the physician practically rip apart Granville with their eyes. Enter the vibrator, which our hero doctor sees in another device worked on by a rich (and very liberal) friend. 

The old physician, by the way, has two daughters: One demure and colorless, by force, the other, headstrong, willful, and ready for a fight. Maggie Gyllenhaal plays the latter. Yes, trouble brews. When Mortimer foolishly calls her a “socialist” for wanting to help the poor, leaving her own privilege behind, the audience nodded knowingly.

The brew goes flat -- dare I say limp? -- at the end, though. The climax of courtroom speeches and declarations of love is old, and far too Hollywood, umm, rigid for an English film made about breaking boundaries. That grinds loud and old. But I could not help but dig watching the way “Hysteria” parallels our own time, and how far some of us want to go back. We need another shakeup, STAT. B+