MOVIE · 2024

Joy

Drama115 min

In Britain in the 1960s and ’70s, nurse and embryologist Jean Purdy (Thomasin McKenzie) joins scientist Robert Edwards and surgeon Patrick Steptoe in a contentious effort to make in vitro fertilisation possible. As the trio push toward the birth of Louise Joy Brown, James Norton’s Edwards and Bill Nighy’s Steptoe face resistance from the church, the press, the state and much of the medical world. Told through Purdy’s perspective, the film keeps its focus on the lab work, hospital politics and personal cost behind a medical first.