Joy review – warm and intensely English portrayal of the birth of IVF

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London film festival
Bill Nighy, James Norton and Thomasin McKenzie form the unlikely trio who doggedly, quietly and courageously made the discovery that would change lives around the world

There is sympathy, warmth and directness – though perhaps not much in the way of explicit joy – in this intensely English true story that made headlines and changed lives around the world.

Screenwriters Jack Thorne, Emma Gordon and Rachel Mason, and director Ben Taylor, dramatise the heartache and strain and triumph that led to the first ever birth of what the press with a mixture of hostility and awe called “a test-tube baby” – that is, a baby conceived through in vitro fertilisation – on 25 July 1978: a little girl called Louise Brown (middle name Joy).

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