Hysteria

Hysteria (2011) is Tanya Wexler's period romantic comedy, and you can watch it online on iFILM. In 1880s London, idealistic young physician Mortimer Granville lands a post in a practice that treats so-called female hysteria by a startlingly hands-on method.

Hugh Dancy plays Mortimer, fed up with the quackery of his peers, who finds steady work at the clinic of Dr. Dalrymple — Jonathan Pryce. Patients arrive in droves, and when the strain leaves his hand cramped and useless, Mortimer and an inventor friend rig up a mechanical fix that becomes the first electric vibrator. Meanwhile he's pulled between Dalrymple's dutiful younger daughter and the elder one, Charlotte, played by Maggie Gyllenhaal — a fierce suffragette who runs a settlement house for the poor and has no patience for propriety. The story is drawn from the real history of the device.

Wexler handles the cheeky premise with a light touch and no smut, shaping it into a comedy of manners about Victorian double standards and early feminism rather than a dirty joke. It's a good pick for fans of witty British period pieces with a wink. Stream Hysteria (2011) online on iFILM.