TORONTO - A mainstream, comedic film about the invention of the vibrator has to walk a delicate line, and actor Hugh Dancy says that's exactly what drew him to the script for "Hysteria" in the first place.

"I had heard of the premise of this movie ... what intrigued me was the tone, was the approach that the movie took," the actor said in a recent telephone interview from New York.

"It could have been any number of things, it could have been a kind of historical investigation, it could have been a bawdy sex comedy. It turns out to be this kind of weird hybrid version of both those things and many other things as well."

"Hysteria" stars Dancy as Dr. Mortimer Granville, who invented the first electric vibrator in the early 1880s.

In the film's fictionalized account of Granville's story, the naive but earnest young physician lands a job with Dr. Robert Dalrymple (Jonathan Pryce), who is able to stimulate a certain female body part to induce "paroxysms" as a treatment for "hysteria."

The women, of course, begin to make frequent appointments for the "procedure," but the two doctors remain clueless about the implications of what they are doing.

"(As for) the scenes when you've got Jonathan Pryce and myself in the doctors' room 'treating' these women, from the first time we sat down and did a read through it was clear that that worked so well," said Dancy.

"That's the best joke in the movie and that's also the one completely realistic thing in the movie ... these great doctors, these very intelligent men were doing this astonishing thing without any awareness of what they were up to at all."

The film is buoyed by a strong supporting cast, including Maggie Gyllenhaal as Dalrymple's headstrong daughter who rails against the sexism of the time, and Rupert Everett as Granville's zany inventor friend who helps him create the famed sex toy.

Directed by Tanya Wexler, "Hysteria" also stars Felicity Jones, whose star has risen considerably since the movie was shot a couple of years ago. Dancy, who is married to actress Claire Danes, has also enjoyed increased exposure since making the film.

He starred in the acclaimed "Martha Marcy May Marlene" last year, and appeared in the lauded Showtime program "The Big C," which recently started airing in Canada on the W Network.

Movies can often sit on a shelf while awaiting a release date, and Dancy says it is pure coincidence if the issues explored in "Hysteria" strike a topical chord.

"It's so weird that we made this movie just under two years ago and that the last thing that we thought we were doing in any way was catching the zeitgeist or making a culturally relevant film," he said.

"And now here we are debating this stuff in congress. Women's sexual rights and sexual politics are so far from being a closed conversation."

What Dancy likes most about "Hysteria" is the unique way the film presents its naughty subject matter.

"I think that the movie that we set out to make and that we made is one that ... runs wild among loads of different tones. It's like a Frankenstein's monster of comedy, of drama, of romantic comedy. I don't know why, but it works."

"Hysteria" opens Friday in Toronto, Vancouver, Ottawa and Montreal. On June 1 it will expand to Calgary, Victoria and Edmonton.