Hysteria (**3/4)

With a lot of nodding and winking about its main subject, this drama settles for being a cute story of a doctor (Hugh Dancy) and a spunky proto-feminist (Maggie Gyllenhaal) rather than anything deeply revealing of Victorian England. The film purports to be based on “true events. Really.” But its plot so obviously neatened up and geared to modern sensibilities and full of speechifying that it’s obviously heavily fictionalized. Dancy plays Mortimer Granville, who pioneered a revolutionary treatment for the wobbly but common diagnosis once thought, we are told, to describe half the women in London, the previous state of the art being digital penetration of the female in question. Amusing, but only that, and, given the above, roughly predictable.

IMDb link

viewed 6/13/12 7:20 at Ritz Bourse and reviewed 6/13/12