The ‘Hysteria’ Is Growing…

I’ve posted pre­vi­ously about the movie, Hysteria, star­ring the deli­cious Hugh Dancy and the bril­liant Maggie Gyllenhaal. Hysteria is a light-​hearted look at the rather unlikely inven­tion of the vibra­tor in Victorian England. It pre­miered last fall at the Toronto Film Festival, and I have been look­ing for­ward to its U.S. debut ever since.

Hysteria will pre­mier in the U.S. May 18, 2012. I shall have to see if Raven is avail­able to see it with me. Or Bear. Alas, Tiger lives too far away to see it with me.

Here are two newer arti­cles about the movie:

“Tribeca Dialogue: ‘Hysteria’ Director Tanya Wexler on Vibrators, Monty Python, and the ‘Thinking Woman’s Romantic Comedy’”

It’s a beau­ti­fully shot period piece full of Victorian flour­ishes and delight­ful cos­tumes, it’s a roman­tic com­edy with a fiercely out­spo­ken pro­tag­o­nist, and it’s about the inven­tion of a unique con­trap­tion that has changed many people’s lives for the bet­ter: the vibra­tor. It’s also about how women were con­trolled, locked up, and ster­il­ized for not toe­ing the tightly corseted Victorian line — for being out­spo­ken, for being emo­tional, for being unsat­is­fied with their sta­tus in society.

I like what Wexler says about fem­i­nism, when asked if Hysteria is a “fem­i­nist roman­tic comedy”:

So fem­i­nism, for me, is about equal oppor­tu­nity, and then what you do and how you make your choices is then up to you and not up to some­one else. And in that way, of course it’s fem­i­nist, but if you take fem­i­nism to be, like, men under the boot of women, well, no, I’m not really inter­ested in that. But I think, weirdly, there’s been such an imbal­ance for so long that I think peo­ple expect that what you’re talk­ing about is swing­ing the pen­du­lum in the oppo­site way instead of cen­ter­ing it.

Go read the whole inter­view – there’s a great new trailer there, too!

The sec­ond arti­cle is an inter­view of Maggie Gyllenhaal, talk­ing about sex scenes.

“Tribeca: Maggie Gyllenhaal on Sex Scenes From a Woman’s Perspective”

When asked why there are so few movies that really deal with female sex­u­al­ity, Gyllenhaal responds:

I’ve talked to so many peo­ple about this. I’ve been inter­viewed about this all over the world and because of how they finance movies now, I’ve talked to women in Norway and Italy and Finland, Spain and all these women kind of say the same thing, which is there aren’t a lot of movies like this. And why is it even in all those dif­fer­ent cul­tures where they’re not par­tic­u­larly prud­ish and open to talk­ing about female sex­u­al­ity? Why, when they watch the movie, is there a kind of hysteria?

And as a writer of smart erot­ica and sex scenes, I love her com­ments about what make sex scenes work for her:

So when you have the oppor­tu­nity to do a sex scene and still be a real, think­ing per­son in the midst of it, it can be an incred­i­ble way of express­ing some­thing about who you’re play­ing and some­thing about the story.

The rest of the inter­view is equally good, so please check it out.

I am so excited to see Hysteria! Are you?