Maggie Gyllenhaal and Hugh Dancy in "Hysteria" directed by Tanya Wexler (a romantic comedy about the invention of the vibrator)The time before the invention of the vibrator is a dark period of world history which I prefer not to think about. But imagine, ladies, if you will, a period when all of a woman’s problems were attributed to “hysteria,” a vague pathological affliction which doctors found could best be cured by applying pressure to a woman’s most delicate regions. A suffering woman could be relieved of her hysteria by hand, of course, but the world needed a device to get the job done more quickly.
Still of Maggie Gyllenhaal in Curiosity: The Questions of Life, photo by Todd Plitt © Discovery Channel“Hysteria” premieres at the Toronto International Film Festival next month and stars Hugh Dancy as a young doctor in Victorian England and Maggie Gyllenhaal as his boss’s daughter, who knows at the root of all these hysterics is a need for pleasure. God bless electricity, that’s all I have to say. Source: tiff.net
