Joy Review: LFF 2024

A heartfelt history of the effort to cure infertility, there’s plenty to love about Joy

In 1970s Britain three trailblazing scientists battle both nature and public opinion to achieve the world’s first successful IVF procedure. Directed by Ben Taylor, who has helmed immensely successful tv shows including Catastrophe and Sex Education, Joy is written by prodigious stage and screen talent Jack Thorne.

Jean Purdy (Thomasin McKenzie – Jojo Rabbit, Last Night in Soho) is hired to be the laboratory manager for acclaimed but controversial biologist Bob Edwards (James Norton – Happy Valley.) Bob claims he is close to being able to cure infertility, and with Jean’s enthusiasm and fresh ideas the two start to make serious progress. After recruiting groundbreaking surgeon Patrick Steptoe (Bill Nighy) and his patients to their cause the team is complete and they are able to start human trials.

Joy is seen largely through the eyes of Jean, an intelligent and accomplished woman who is excited to be at the forefront of scientific innovation in an era where the possibilities for women in academia are finally starting to open up. Where her male colleagues sometimes see their patients as numbers on a spreadsheet, Jean becomes personally involved with many of the women they recruit. There’s real humanity at the heart of her work.

But where Jean see’s a way to help people, the rest of society does not necessarily agree. Her work brings her into conflict with both her family and her church, who claim that the scientists performing IVF are trying to play God. Bob and his team are vilified in the media, funding for the research dries up, and the path to success becomes a lot more difficult than any of them might have imagined.

Though IVF is now widespread, popular and successful (an end card reveals that 12 million babies have since been born through the use of it) it feels inherently political and pertinent to be making a film about women’s reproductive rights at a time when their protection is being stripped away in many countries. Thorne’s script doesn’t get too on the nose, but there are conversations had that you could almost hear parroted in far-right media today. Despite being a period piece, Joy feels incredibly current, and terrifyingly relevant. (The topic of abortion does also come up, though only briefly as the plot remains narrowed in on the issue of infertility.)

With the focus of the story being on the people behind the science quite a lot of time is spent on relating how Jean’s personal story links in to the research, and the motivations for the team as a whole in doing this work. It’s clear the film makers wanted to educate in some way about who these people were, yet it only paints their lives and how they relate to society around them in the broadest of strokes. It feels a little wasted when all of Joy’s biggest emotional moments (and there are some big emotional moments) come from the patients and their stories, rather than the lead characters themselves.

McKenzie, who I have massively admired in her previous work, feels a little miscast here. She comes across as too young for the role (though cursory research tells me she is exactly the same age as Jean was at the start of the project) but it is perhaps just that she has this ineffable air of innocence about her. She doesn’t quite carry the weight that Jean’s backstory suggests she should. Nighy, reliably as ever, adds gravitas to every scene he is in; but Norton is given quite little to do.

Still, Joy is an accomplished film that really does tug at the heart strings. In an emotive scene that uses the ultimate cheat code to make me fall in love with something – playing Vaughn Williams ‘The Lark Ascending’ over the top of it – I couldn’t help but shed a tear at the desperation, hope and fragility of it all. That it could get me, a fiercely childfree person, to be so invested in whether someone has a baby or not is pretty powerful stuff. A fascinating slice of history with a stirring story at its heart, Joy does live up to its name. A joyful watch.

Joy receives its world premiere as part of the BFI London Film Festival 2024. It will be out on Netflix on 22^nd November 2024.