Joy (12A, 124 mins)

Verdict: Uplifting tale

Pub quiz enthusiasts have always known the name of the first ‘test-tube’ baby. The question pops up a lot, and the answer is Louise Brown.

But it’s her middle name that gives Ben Taylor’s film its heartwarming тιтle. Evidently, at the invitation of Louise’s ecstatic parents, it was conferred by the medical team who made their daughter’s life possible. Fittingly, they chose Joy.

The film stars Bill Nighy, James Norton and Thomasin McKenzie as the British pioneers of in vitro fertilisation (IVF), the treatment from which Louise was born in July 1978 .

In some ways it reminds me of The Social Network (2010) and The Imitation Game (2014), even Oppenheimer (2023). They are all stories about complex breakthroughs that have to be told compellingly, because we know the ending even before the lights go down.

To create dramatic tension, major obstacles must stand in the way. Here, the establishment is ᴅᴇᴀᴅ against what obstetrician Patrick Steptoe (Nighy), physiologist Robert Edwards (Norton) and embryologist Jean Purdy (McKenzie) are attempting to do. In Edwards’s words, that, simply, is ‘to cure childlessness’.

Once the trio have joined forces in 1968, Steptoe anticipates the hostility they will face. ‘The Church, the state, the world… they’ll throw the book at us,’ he says.

The film stars Bill Nighy , James Norton and Thomasin McKenzie as the British pioneers of in vitro fertilisation ( IVF ), the treatment from which Louise was born in July 1978

To create dramatic tension, major obstacles must stand in the way. Here, the establishment is ᴅᴇᴀᴅ against what they are trying to do

The film’s challenge is to make the myriad complexities of early IVF research accessible to today’s audience

Screenwriter Jack Thorne personalises that — with how much dramatic licence I don’t know — by building an estrangement between Purdy and her devoutly religious mother (Joanna Scanlan).

But told that they have no right ‘to play God’, both Purdy and Edwards have a ready (if perhaps disingenuous) response: that nobody says the same thing about spectacles and dentures, so why shouldn’t human ingenuity address infertility as it has myopia and tooth decay?

Read More Gladiator II review: Sequel falls short of its masterpiece predecessor but is still heaps of fun

The film’s challenge is to make the myriad complexities of early IVF research accessible to today’s audience. It does this well, striking an easy balance between the solemn medical jargon required to give the story authenticity (in Joy, as far as I’m aware, ‘pre-ovulating follicles’ make their debut in mainstream cinema) and that jaunty period charm which so often drives British films set in the 1960s.

It was even evident last time the Kiwi actress McKenzie popped up in 1960s England, playing a haunted fashion student in Edgar Wright’s gripping psychological horror film Last Night In Soho (2021). She was perfect for that role, but here seems to me slightly miscast: too wan and winsome to play the formidable Purdy. Mind you, a quick Wikipedia check reveals that Purdy, remarkably, was only 23 when she first teamed up with the much-older Steptoe and Edwards.

As Steptoe, Nighy delivers his standard set of soft-voice and fluttery-hand mannerisms, but he’s convincing as the doctor compelled by the forces of stuffy disapproval to pursue his dream in an outbuilding behind an Oldham hospital.

And Norton is perfectly fine as the ebullient Edwards, who in a TV debate takes on one of the scientific grandees bitterly opposed to the concept of IVF: the molecular biologist James Watson.

In some ways it reminds me of The Social Network (2010) and The Imitation Game (2014), even Oppenheimer (2023), Brian Viner writes

As Steptoe, Nighy delivers his standard set of soft-voice and fluttery-hand mannerisms, but he’s convincing as the doctor compelled by the forces of stuffy disapproval to pursue his dream in an outbuilding behind an Oldham hospital

Incidentally, just as Watson won the Nobel Prize (for his part in the discovery of DNA), so, decades later, did Edwards. But this film is focused on the battle more than the victory, lingering over the laboratory failures that ended in disappointment for the first group of aspiring mothers treated in Oldham.

Again, I don’t know how much springs from real life and how much from Thorne’s keyboard, but those women drolly call themselves the Ovum Club, and, in an affectionate scene, even have a charabanc trip to the seaside.

Purdy, who goes with them, is the central figure in Joy, as the filmmakers strive to give her the status that for years Edwards insisted she deserved, as an equal partner in the IVF story.

Alas, she wasn’t around to hear his pleas. In 1985 the woman who shared responsibility for the creation of so many lives had her own claimed by cancer, before she turned 40.

Joy is showing in cinemas now, and will be available on Netflix from November 22. 

Celebrity beauticians face off in true thriller 

Skincare (18, 96 mins) is a thriller not without blemish, but Elizabeth Banks gives a suitably glowing performance as Los Angeles beautician Hope Goldman, who believes a rival is trying to drive her out of business with a campaign of hate mail and commercial sabotage.

There are some clunky plot twists (and an awful lot of doors left conveniently ajar at night) but maybe that’s how it really happened, because the film was inspired by the true story of ‘celebrity facialist’ Dawn DaLuise.

Skincare is available on several streaming platforms now.

Skincare (18, 96 mins) is a thriller not without blemish, but Elizabeth Banks (pictured) gives a suitably glowing performance

There are some clunky plot twists (and an awful lot of doors left conveniently ajar at night) but maybe that’s how it really happened

 

Swords and sandals… and killer baboons 

Gladiator II (15, 148 mins)

Verdict: Much to Crowe about

Throughout Sir Ridley Scott’s exuberant sequel to Gladiator (2000) you can almost hear the cogs in his mind turning like chariot wheels, as he contrives shamelessly unsubtle parallels with the original film.

So once again we have a tragically bereaved hero who once had the ear of emperors but is reduced to fighting for his life in the Colosseum.

This time it’s Lucius (Paul Mescal), young nephew of evil Commodus in the first film, now enslaved after leading the resistance to Roman imperial ambitions in North Africa.

Lucius hasn’t seen his mother, Commodus’s sister Lucilla (Connie Nielsen), for years. Little does he know that she is now married to the very Roman general, Marcus Acacius (Pedro Pascal), whom he blames for the death of his comely wife.

A shady arms dealer called Macrinus (Denzel Washington, camping up his lines with glee) has made Lucius his champion, observing that ‘rage pours out of you like milk’.

Throughout Sir Ridley Scott’s exuberant sequel to Gladiator (2000) you can almost hear the cogs in his mind turning like chariot wheels, as he contrives shamelessly unsubtle parallels with the original film

Once again we have a tragically bereaved hero who once had the ear of emperors but is reduced to fighting for his life in the Colosseum 

Certainly, Lucius is not cowed by anything the Colosseum can throw at him, from killer baboons to savage sharks. Yes, sharks! Historical truths have never mattered much to Scott.

Meanwhile, Rome has become a cesspit of depravity under slimy twin emperors Geta (Joseph Quinn) and his twin brother Caracalla (Fred Hechinger) — think Jedward in togas. So Acacius plots with the fragrant Lucilla to overthrow them.

By now she has realised that Lucius is her long-lost son, but can she overcome his hatred? And what will he make of the revelation that Russell Crowe’s Maximus was his real father? For that matter, what do we make of it? It wasn’t what we were led to believe first time round.

But never mind petty inconveniences like facts. The fight scenes are great, Washington is a hoot, and as a sword-and-sandals hero Mescal has plenty to Crowe about.

A longer review of this film ran in Tuesday’s paper. Gladiator II is in cinemas now.