Nurse Jean Purdy (Thomasin McKenzie) and her friend Arun (Rish Shah) talk about a scientist and their friend Robert. From the way Ben Taylor’s  Joy starts, it seems like Robert or ‘Bob’ Edwards (James Norton). It seems like he’s the film’s centre. But that eventually shifts to Jean, a brilliant scientist in her own right. She gets to talk about the subjects whom she and Bob are studying. Their studies, by the way, involve the idea that some women aren’t inherently ‘infertile’, that they can fertilise their eggs differently. Doing that work involves Jean talking to the subjects, who reveal their motivations, and caring for them when things go wrong. 

Joy doesn’t just show Jean in a position where she cares for the subjects, she’s also on the science side of fertilising eggs. Her insights are helpful when things go wrong, and things can go wrong when people embark on scientific breakthroughs. When she speaks, others spring into action, like Robert, on the lab side, and Patrick Steptoe (Bill Nighy) on the surgery side. They do all of this work under the scrutiny of the media who want to invade both their and their subjects’ privacy, among others. They face a lot of temptations and frustrations as they tell the story of the real life people behind discovering in vitro fertilisation.

A lot of Joy involves Jean’s interactions with the subjects which, although they’re fleeting, attempt to give the film meaning. Jean notices bruises on one of the subjects who tells her that the latter’s motivation is to have someone in her life that is hers. Another minor character in Joy is a subject during the early stages and becomes pregnant, contemplating being the first one. These women comprise a group who call themselves the ovum club, and they go on beach outings with Jean and the others. The film is long enough as it is at 115 minutes minus credits, but it feels like it needed to workshop the ovum club scenes.

I’m also of two minds when it comes to Jean’s relationships with doctors, some being better and some needing work. I like her scenes with Arun, showing the kind of relationships that were around during the sexual revolution despite their feelings. The same goes for her relationship with Bob that stays platonic, even with some of their strange conversations that are onscreen. A lot of those conversations, whether or not they’re alone or with the other doctors, feel like unnatural sounding squad goals. I get what kind of film Joy is, but both of them get a say like everybody, with similar sounding metres when discussing science.

The dialogue has its share of clunk coming from archetypal characters but there’s something about the characters that work. There’s something in Joy, particularly Bob as an intense scientist, that gives life to the film that may otherwise seem boring, Bob is a great counterbalance to Jean, a calm presence to a film despite her inner turmoil being a Christian who does science. It helps that it plays with those archetypes as well, like Bob being emotional while Jean has an empathetic approach to things. I just said they were different but maybe it’s different manifestations of the same thing that gives this film an interesting spin.

Joy is out on Netflix.

[Editor’s note: this new version of the review reflect more accurate information on Purdy’s role in IVF research.]