VIDEO: Hugh Dancy And Maggie Gyllenhaal Make Vibrator History In New FIlm Hysteria

Necessity, as the saying goes, is the mother of invention. One invention in particular actually has quite a lot to do with mothers, daughters and their, um, necessities. Just ask actors Hugh Dancy and Maggie Gyllenhaal, who star in the forthcoming Hysteria, a film by Tanya Wexler set in the Victorian era about the female orgasm and the very first vibrator. It’s true — despite the popular image of them as a bunch of buttoned-up prudes, Victorians were pioneers in the field of battery-operated stimulation.

Due to premiere at the forthcoming Toronto Film Festival, Hysteria casts Dancy and actor Jonathan Pryce as doctors trying to cure women of their uncontrollable, emotional outbursts, once believed to be an exclusively female condition originating somewhere in the uterus. Gyllenhaal plays Pryce’s daughter, who witnesses the experiments and the birth of a revolution. Rupert Everett and Felicity Jones also star in the bawdy new film.