“Joy” has been a much-used title in recent years, as a new film about the battle to develop an in vitro fertilization treatment justifies recycling once again with a late-in-the-film reveal: That was the middle name given to Louise Joy Brown. The first so-called “test-tube baby” in the world, and the first successful result during more than a decade of painful and controversial medical research. But joy is also the key element in this feature-length debut from British TV comedy director Ben Taylor (“Sex Education,” “Catastrophe”), who sets himself the somewhat difficult task of fashioning a fun, crowd-pleasing film out of story material in which moments Of excitement. The elation outweighs a great deal of that crushing heartbreak.
To this day, the odds remain against women applying for IVF, given its alarming success rate (still well below 50%) and sometimes exorbitant costs: while at least 12 million babies have been born via the procedure in the past 45. years, and many of them remain an unfulfilled dream for their parents.
Jack Thorne’s screenplay for “Joy” navigates this tonal challenge by centering its narrative on a woman who does not undergo treatment, but is intensely invested in it: Jane Purdy, a young British nurse who joins a male-dominated fertility research team as an assistant in 1969, before… becoming more fully involved as an embryologist in the years leading up to Brown’s game-changing 1978 birth. Played by Thomasin MacKenzie with gritty, gritty determination, she plays in the film both as an unsung heroine and as an audience surrogate, cutting through the patriarchal chatter of the 1970s scientific fraternity by disarming common sense and emotional intelligence.
The fact that her own working-class, God-fearing motherhood has her own maternal aspirations thwarted is a personal detail that Joy obscures for longer than one might expect, and in fact the film never gets under the skin of a woman who contributes to it. Her pioneering project was not officially recognized until long after her cancer-related death at the age of just 39. She is introduced, bright-eyed and very clean, applying for an assistant position in the Cambridge laboratory of charmingly distracted physiologist Dr. Bob Edwards (James Norton), whose artificial insemination experiments are still in the hamster testing phase.
They need an obstetrician on board: enter the brash but kind-hearted Patrick Steptoe (Bill Nighy, usually funny and personable), resident at a dilapidated, underfunded hospital up north in Oldham, who’s not afraid to stand up to the skeptical gatekeepers. ship. The world of medicine. Such impudence is necessary at a time when the idea of having a baby outside the womb is viewed as a kind of crime against nature by much of the British public, abetted by the dual forces of the church and the popular media – the latter of which are quick to respond. Edwards was nicknamed “Dr. Frankenstein” as soon as news of his research came out.
Upon discovering what her daughter is really working on, Purdy’s conservative mother Gladys (Joanna Scanlan) is scandalized enough to be banned from the family home. A sketchily drawn romance with sweet young doctor Arun (Rish Shah) teases the possibility of domestic bliss, but Purdy resists, sensing no nuclear family in her future, even as her team moves toward a miraculous medical breakthrough.
“Joy” errs on the side of comfort in its opening segments, locating a bunch of gentle comedy in the interpersonal conflicts between the genius Purdy, the well-intentioned grumpy Edwards, and the world-weary Steptoe as they find their work dynamic, filling the soundtrack with pop-music chops The optimistic spirituality of that era. Jamie Cairney’s lenses are soft and sun-warmed, adding or subtracting from the horror of Greater Manchester, while Sinead Kiddaw’s period tweed costumes look comfortably relaxed.
This joy dissipates when the project encounters several dispiriting obstacles in the form of funding denials and failed prosecutions, though “Joy” still makes light of the human devastation taking place here. It’s only interested in peeking into the inner lives of childless women — who collectively call themselves the “Egg Club” — and undergo this experimental treatment, having been warned that they are more likely to pave the way for others than to become mothers themselves. Early in the process, one of these hopefuls criticized Purdy for treating them “like cattle,” and modified her bedside manner accordingly. Edwards is also reprimanded by a colleague for speaking of women as if they were guinea pigs, before later proving his deeper connection with a full recitation of their names.
However, similar accusations could be leveled at the film “Joy”, which is overly superficial in its treatment of these vulnerable souls – one mentions being a victim of domestic violence and is never mentioned again, while another is allowed a short, sober reaction to the news of an out-of-order situation. the womb. pregnancy – but it aims for collective catharsis as Purdy brings them together in one morale-lifting montage of celebrations on the beach. Even Leslie Brown (Ella Broccolieri), history’s first mother via artificial insemination, is strangely shortchanged in the film, not having much of an on-screen waking moment after a dramatic, eye-soothing birth sequence: one can’t help but wonder if A female director and screenwriter might have made some rather different choices.
Still, it’s hard not to be moved by “Joy,” which taps into a fairly universal feeling about the choices we make, or reject, in the families we build for ourselves. It’s sure to break a lot of hearts when it lands on Netflix, after premiering at the London Film Festival, with viewers projecting their own lives onto its narrative. Despite Mackenzie’s engaging and genuinely felt efforts, Purdy herself feels just as much pain and longing in her patients as a character in her own right. When she confesses to Gladys that she’s been having unprotected sex for ten years, hoping to get pregnant, we’re as surprised as her mother.
Booking voice-over by Norton’s Edwards calls for Purdy’s name to be added to the plaque marking the first IVF birth at Oldham Hospital, stressing the valid point that medical history is not made by doctors alone. “Joy” echoes the good work the painting did in elevating the name of women to the status of their male colleagues and contemporaries. The lost life behind that name is still a little harder to read.