The events leading up to July 1978 and the birth in Manchester of the world’s first “test tube baby” — the tabloid term for the process known more soberly as I.V.F. (in vitro fertilization) — are fascinating by any metric. It’s a story of determination, skill and genuine genius, focusing on three modest and largely unsung heroes driven in the main by a spirit of pure human kindness. Fascinating as that is, however, Ben Taylor’s warm, intelligent and never less than respectful movie, which received its world premiere at the London Film Festival this week, struggles to harness the same kind of lightning that science did.
Ostensibly an ensemble piece, Joy is actually a vehicle for the charming Thomasin McKenzie, the young New Zealand actress who broke out in 2018’s Leave No Trace and makes a welcome return to drama here. In a rare instance of age-appropriate casting, she plays Jean Purdy, a British nurse and embryologist who, in 1968, teamed up with Cambridge physiologist Robert Edwards (James Norton) in his bid to find a cure for childlessness. Their first meeting, ostensibly at a job interview, has the hallmarks of a gentle romcom; Edwards has lost his precious lab rat Sylvia, and Purdy steps in to scoop it up (“If I hear a commotion, I’m not very good at staying out of it,” she explains with a smile).
But although there is certainly chemistry in the central pairing, Joy is more of an offbeat buddy movie, which is emphasized by the introduction of obstetrician Patrick Steptoe, played rather wonderfully by Bill Nighy. Steptoe has been working with keyhole surgery, and we meet him at the kind of stuffy seminar that is the staple of every medical drama. “You’re quite wrong,” he rails at row upon row of frowning physicians, accusing them of “wasting time on inept science”. Steptoe affects to be too busy to talk with Purdy and Edwards, but his brusque façade is quickly broken down. Before long, he is the third musketeer, and his wisdom grounds the project in much-needed reality. “You’re aware they’re going to throw the book at us,” he warns. “The church, the state, the world.”
This existential threat is the villain of the piece, and though it was very real at the time, it’s very hard in the modern age to show it on screen. The three scientists come under scrutiny from the press, and their research is both vilified and vandalized: the phrase “playing God” is invoked, and Edwards suffers comparisons to Nazi doctor Josef Mengele and literary Prometheus Victor Frankenstein. On a more literal lever, Purdy has to contend with her highly religious mother (Joanna Scanlan), who accuses her daughter of defiling nature and fraternizing with abortionists (“It’s dirty what you’re doing”).
Other than this, there’s not a lot of conflict in the story. Jack Thorne’s screenplay confects a bit of mild tension between Purdy and Edwards, whom she accuses of seeing his patients as statistics rather than women, but steers admirably clear of creating a whole new fictional nemesis, as Patch Adams did. In a sense, the enemy is time, and the trio’s research stops and starts over a period of ten years as the cash comes and goes and sensibilities change (Edwards even gives up for a time and tries, with little consequence, to become a politician).
Nevertheless, it’s clear where all this is headed, and there’s only so much excitement to be had from the sight of embryonic cells dividing. Knowing this, Joy pivots slightly to fill us in on Purdy’s backstory, her own struggle with infertility and serious health issues that subtly foreshadow her early death at 39 (in 1985, outside the film’s timeframe). It’s a mild and bait-and-switch that slightly over-eggs the ending (on a meta level, you could say Purdy did give birth, and that baby was I.V.F.), but it does give the film some much-needed emotional heft, turning an earnest history lesson into something a tad more personal.
Title: Joy
Festival: London Film Festival
Distributor: Netflix
Director: Ben Taylor
Screenwriters: Jack Thorne
Cast: Thomasin McKenzie, James Norton, Bill Nighy, Tanya Moody, Joanna Scanlan
Running time: 1 hr 53 mins
