Netflix's Self-Centered 'Joy' Fails to Spark Joy

The political overtones of Joy, the biopic of the English scientists who pioneered in vitro fertilization births (IVF), are even more blatant the month it releases on Netflix. This November’s election has spread nationwide the fear that reproductive rights in America will enter a new dark age, but threats of abortion bans and evangelical policies didn’t come out of a vacuum – the same desires to quash the bodily autonomy of anyone who’s not a cisgender man have dominated conservative politics for centuries.

But although the film may be timely, the extent to which Joy can be enriched by resonance with the real-world context is more limited than it would like to believe. This is because Joy, which stars Thomasin Mackenzie (The Power of the Dog), James Norton (Grantchester), and Bill Nighy (The Man Who Fell To Earth) as “test-tube baby” trailblazers Jean Purdy, Robert Edwards, and Patrick Steptoe, won’t let us forget for a second how momentous their scientific breakthrough is and how relevant its social pushback is for us today.

The film trusts its audience not one iota to make these extratextual connections themselves,* with every shred of nuance about the gendered process and hierarchy of the IVF experiment spelled out in dialogue and close-ups of frowning, frustrated faces contemplating the weight of their work. The miscast actors playing stock biopic characters make the artistic hollowness of the project all the more damning.