David Cronenberg's A Dangerous Method dealt with the 19th century phenomenon that was hysteria, via Freud, Jung and a healthy dose of spanking. Meanwhile, in Victorian England, Tanya Wexler is less interested in talking cures, and more enamoured of mechanical ones. Her invention-of-the-vibrator comedy Hysteria** is amost upon us, and a new trailer has just arrived at Yahoo!
Seemingly a jollier affair than Cronenberg's, Hysteria is about the more-or-less accidental discovery of the device that would, a century later, be mass-produced, painted pink and given bunny ears.
Jonathan Pryce and Hugh Dancy are Drs Robert Dalrymple and Mortimer Granville, specialists in ghastly women's nervous emotional disorders. Rupert Everett, on typically louche form, is Granville's scientist pal Lord Edmund St John-Smythe, who first comes up with the prototype "feather duster".
And Felicity Jones and Maggie Gyllenhaal are the Dalrymple sisters, daughters of Dr Robert. The spirited "Chinese firecracker" (Everett's words) Gyllenhaal it is who helps to inspire Granville's medical breakthrough.
Half of Europe had Hysteria last winter, with the rest to get it in the next couple of months. We're seemingly without a nailed-on release date in the UK so far, but the US will feel the buzz on May 18.