‘Joy’ Review: Thomasin McKenzie, James Norton and Bill Nighy Lift Netflix’s Pedestrian Drama About IVF-Pioneering Brits

It’s hard to build dramatic momentum out of scientists hunched over microscopes peering at petri dishes. Indeed, director Ben Taylor struggles to clear that hurdle in his conventional but watchable enough account of the development of what became known as in vitro fertilization. While it’s more compelling as human drama than science, the film benefits from timeliness, given right-wing efforts to curb women’s reproductive freedoms and recent moves by Senate Republicans to block a bill protecting the right to IVF. That factor, plus the very capable cast, should help Joy find an audience on Netflix, though anti-choice extremists won’t be among them.

If the production looks and sounds like a movie but plays more like dated television, the fault lies mainly with Jack Thorne’s by-the-numbers script. The writer takes Brit historical dramas like The Imitation Game as his model to map a breakthrough in 20th century medical science that gave hope to countless women unable to conceive a child. But the stodgy familiarity of the inspirational, based-on-a-true-story template gives Joy a halting rhythm that echoes the stop-start progress of the fertility treatment pioneers.

That team is formed when Jean Purdy (Thomasin McKenzie), a nurse and future embryologist, is hired as a lab manager in the Department of Physiology at Cambridge, working under Robert Edwards (James Norton). After making initial headway with the study of human fertilization in the late ‘60s, they take their findings to obstetrician and gynecologist Patrick Steptoe (Bill Nighy), at that time considered something of a pariah by the British medical establishment for his championing of laparoscopy.

Patrick is crotchety and dismissive of their overtures at first, but Bob and Jean talk him around with their passionate belief in the project and intriguing early research. They agree to set up operations in a disused wing of Oldham General Hospital, a four-hour drive from Cambridge. Patrick warns them they will have the Church, the state and the whole world against them. “But we’ll have the mothers,” counters Bob.

As work on the project inches forward, the three dissimilar personalities — along with Muriel (Tanya Moodie), the brisk, no-nonsense senior nurse who insists on being addressed by her job title of Matron — gradually build a harmonious professional relationship.

But the focus tightens on Jean as the central figure. A churchgoing Christian cut off by her loving mother Gladys (Joanna Scanlan) when she refuses to abandon the controversial work, Jean is revealed to have a personal investment in women’s fertility issues. This becomes especially relevant for her when her unintended romance with Cambridge lab colleague Arun (Rish Shah) gets serious and he proposes, making it clear he’s eager to start a family.

One of the more enjoyable parts of the movie is Jean’s rapport with the disparate group of women signing up for the experiment, who forge a sense of community during their hospital visits. Jean’s manner of dealing with them as she administers regular hormone injections is detached and clinical at first — much like her earlier consent to have sex with Arun, on the condition that he form no attachment.

When a member of the Ovum Club, as they’ve dubbed themselves, points out that Jean could stand to work on her people skills, she immediately softens, learning to put the women at ease. It’s through those interactions that Thorne’s screenplay shows deep compassion for the many childless women yearning for a baby, grounding the drama in basic human need as much as science. There’s poignancy also in the participants’ knowledge that most of them will not get pregnant, but that they are laying the groundwork for future mothers who will.

A heated scene in which the Medical Research Council declines to provide development funding, arguing that the research will benefit only a small handful of the population, underscores Jean, Bob and Patrick’s frustration as they try to make people grasp the concept of infertility as a treatable condition.

The one-step-forward, two-steps-back pattern of positive results followed by disappointment becomes a bit static. But after Jean learns that her still estranged mother is dying, she breaks with the group, dismissing their efforts as a failure and parting on bitter terms with Bob. That allows for the inevitable resumption of work when stinging loss galvanizes Jean back into action.

The final stretch leading up to the first successful “test-tube birth” in 1978, acquires welcome notes of suspense and emotional power — the latter amplified by text at the end of the film revealing that 12 million babies have been born thanks to IVF in the decades since. We also learn that Edwards, the last surviving member of the team, was awarded the Nobel Prize for their work in 2010.

Thorne frames the story with Bob’s letter, heard in voiceover, lobbying for the inclusion of Jean’s name on a plaque at the hospital honoring the IVF pioneers. What the script doesn’t address, somewhat mystifyingly, is the decades during which Purdy’s vital contribution went unacknowledged, no doubt due to her gender and the reductive view of her role as that of a mere lab technician.

The screenplay also fails to make much of the public hostility directed at the research team. The handful of press and protestors outside the hospital shouting “Dr. Frankenstein,” a bit of graffiti and one instance in which Jean is shown receiving a hate-mail package don’t exactly solidify the idea of a wall of opposition. A TV appearance in which Bob is shouted down by an angry studio audience is more effective.

Taylor, a seasoned TV director best known for the streaming series Catastrophe and Sex Education, does a competent job with his sharp-looking first feature, even if the narrative flow is erratic. The movie leans heavily on Steven Price’s score for dramatic weight and on a very random selection of ‘60s and ‘70s needle drops for energy. Only Nina Simone’s gorgeous cover of “Here Comes the Sun” over the opening credits makes thematic sense in terms of the story’s ultimate outcome.

Fortunately, the actors lift the material. McKenzie creates an appealing contrast between Jean’s mousy voice and her grit and forthrightness, shaded with an understated vein of melancholy. Nighy brings his usual economy of means to a veteran medical professional whose formality gives way to reveal his warm, caring nature; Patrick’s approaching retirement age incentivizes him to make a difference. Norton, nerded out with glasses and Michael Caine’s old hair, has the charm and sincerity necessary to put across Thorne’s frequently hackneyed declarations — “We’re making the impossible possible,” “Everything changes from here.”

Scanlan as Jean’s mum and Moodie as Matron both make strong impressions, though even those smaller roles are not entirely spared moments of speechifying. For instance, when Jean is distressed to learn that Patrick has been performing abortions at the hospital — which were legal by that time but still strongly opposed by the Church — Matron thunders back: “We are here to give women a choice. Every choice.”

Joy may not represent the height of sophisticated storytelling, but it has the advantage of an interesting story rescued from historical obscurity. It will touch the hearts of many parents whose lives have been changed — and in the case of their children, made possible — by those ten long years of dedication that led to the IVF breakthrough.